


Ghastly Truth

by howardently



Category: My Mad Fat Diary
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-10-25
Updated: 2016-04-05
Packaged: 2018-04-28 03:37:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 28,910
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5076295
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/howardently/pseuds/howardently
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rae Earl, Ghost Hunter</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

“You’re something of a modern day Nancy Drew then,” Danielle O’Day laughs her million dollar chuckle. Finn grunts at the television from his seat at one of the break-room tables. “Exposing all the secrets of so-called hauntings.”

Rae laughs and the camera slowly zooms in close on her. She looks good on camera, he’s discovered over these last few months. Her shimmering sheet of hair reflects back the stage lights, and she grins a razor smile from behind ruby-painted lips. She crosses and recrosses her legs a lot. “Well, it’s been my great delight to debunk so many pervasive fallacies. You’d be surprised how many people still believe in ghosts even in this day and age!”

Danielle looks coyly down at the floor and tosses her hair over her shoulder. With a wry grin, she says, “Well, even I will admit to… succumbing to fear once in a while!”

The audience titters and the camera pans into a pair of women laughing towards each other. Carol from accounting is sitting at a table in the corner watching the screen rapturously, so she doesn’t notice the sneer Finn directs her way. She’s the only thing preventing him from turning this off.

“It’s a common enough phenomenon, Danielle.” Rae says warmly, tilting her head sympathetically. “There are a lot of psychological reasons why people are inclined to believe in the supernatural. But it can become very limiting and damaging, just like any other mentally inhibiting thought process.”

“Really? Damaging how?” Danielle makes a face into the camera, one Finn’s seen a hundred times in ads and magazine covers. It’s her thoughtful, concerned television host face.

“Well, for many people, believing in ghosts is kind of a gateway into a life of fear.” Rae has become serious and academic; she’s using her so-much-smarter than everyone else tone. It’s one he’s never been able to forget, even in the many years since they were students together. She can make anything sound believable with that kind of voice. “It can become a cycle- because they think the paranormal is real, they’re more inclined to interpret evidence in the world around them as supernatural. And then because they’re interpreting things as supernatural, their belief deepens further until more things seem magical. And on and on it goes.”

The camera focuses on Danielle’s concerned face once more. She’s nodding thoughtfully, focused on Rae’s pedantry. The audience is full of squinty eyed women nodding at their neighbors. Carol makes a humming noise of approval. He takes a huge bite of his sandwich; once he finishes his food, he can spend the rest of his lunch break at his desk and away from the media machine that is his former classmate and girlfriend. If he’d known that she’d use her psychology degree to become his own inescapable ghost, always haunting him from bookstores and radio interviews, he never would have dated her.

“There’s good news, though, Danielle!” Her voice is cheery, and he looks up to find her making her dangerous smile, the one she’s always used to get what she wants. “There are some simple exercises you can do to stop the cycle and get yourself out of that way of thinking. You can train your brain to form new pathways of thought.”

“And how exactly would the viewers do that?” Danielle asks, looking out benevolently over the audience, a mother hen to the world.

The camera switches over to Rae once more, and it’s so lingering and soft that it’s almost a caress. Rae grins right into the lens, eyes bright and shining, her dynamic face lit up and engaging.  “Well, they’ll have to buy my book to find out!”

Danielle O’Day laughs hollowly, reaching to the table beside her and picking up a small hardbound book with a spooky black and white photo of a castle on the front. She holds it out for the camera like the professional she is.

“Well, you can pick up Rachel’s book,  _Ghastly Truth: Unraveling the Supernatural Myth,_  at bookstores near you. It’s the DayBreak book of the month, so I encourage you to pick up a copy and interact with us at daybreak.com. Thank you so much, Rachel! It was lovely having you.”

The audience starts clapping as Rae replies, “Thank you so much for having me. It’s been amazing!” Finn thinks she might be blushing a little at the raucous cheering from the audience, thinks he can detect the familiar hue of her blood thrumming under her skin. He dismisses it as he finishes his sandwich, he’s not sure the girl is even capable of showing real emotion. She seems to have only gotten faker and more plastic since their days at Uni. He’s fortunate to have gotten out when he did.

Carol sighs as a soft drink commercial starts to play. “I just love her, don’t you?”

Finn looks around before answering, just to make sure she’s talking to him. “Danielle O’Day? She’s alright, I suppose.”

Carol laughs, or maybe twitters. “No, silly. Rachel Earl. She’s amazing. I’ve read her book twice already. Helped me so much during my divorce.”

“Her ghost book helped you through your divorce?” Finn blurts, equal parts skeptical and horrified.

“Oh, it’s about so much more than just ghosts.” Carol tilts her head after a second, does something with her mouth. “I could take you to the bookstore after work if you’d like, help you get your own copy. We could even have dinner after. If you want.”

It takes him a minute to understand that she’s hitting on him. Asking him on a date to buy his ex-girlfriend’s book. He chugs the rest of his cola, wishing it was a beer, and gets up from the table with a loud screech of the chair against the linoleum.

“Nah, you’re good.” He says, quickly striding from the room. He glances through the window into the breakroom as he hurries through the hallway back to his office. Carol’s poking dejectedly at her microwave meal, but he doesn’t feel bad.

Anybody who thinks Rae Earl is amazing is out of the question, divorced or not. He has the unwelcome vision of glancing over to Carol’s nightstand while he’s fucking her and seeing Rae’s facing grinning at him from the dust jacket of the book. Yeah, definitely not.

—

**_Nine Months Later…_ **

She’s late. She was supposed to meet the stylist from the agency fifteen minutes ago, and Angie already hates her. She’s stubborn, she knows, but it’s one of the things she’s come to really like about herself. Along with her sense of style, even if it isn’t up to Angie’s (and okay Wersham Media’s) standards. But she is who she is, and obstinately sticking to that has gotten her this far already.

What does Angie know anyway?

Still, she’s hustling over the grounds of Wersham Media, already cursing the slowness of the elevator inside the building she hasn’t gotten to yet. It’s a gorgeous September afternoon, the world painted in amber hues as it dresses itself in autumnal finery, but she doesn’t notice. She’s on her fifth cup of coffee and her fourth meeting of the day.

“Rae!” A male voice calls from somewhere behind her.

She huffs a sigh but doesn’t stop. It’s rude, she knows that too. Anybody who really needs to reach her can go through her publicist, so there’s no reason for her to allow herself to be accosted on the street. It might be a fan though; she’d started to get noticed around town pretty regularly after DayBreak. Angie can stuff herself, she’s going to have to be another five minutes late. She slows down, puts on her publicity smile.

“Rae!” He calls again, and a creeping sense of dread slinks through her. Fans never call her Rae. She considers briefly making a break for it, escaping into the safety of the secure Wersham building. Except, she knows he’s faster and that she’d never outpace him. She stops, thinking longingly of the silence of that long elevator ride.

“Thank fuck.” He says as he approaches her. She doesn’t turn, but makes him walk around her so that he can face her. It’s a power move she’d learned from famed television host Andrew Marr himself. She straightens her spine and carefully smoothes out her face. “I’ve chased you across the whole parking lot. You sure can hustle, girl.”

She wants to sneer, spit at him that she’s nobody’s girl, least of all his, but she hasn’t seen him in almost three years. She’s going to get the upper ground here and the best way to do that it is with cool collectedness verging on disdain. Nobody had to teach her that, disdain just comes naturally.

“Finn.” She deliberately looks him up and down, then raises her eyebrows at him. He looks good, but so what? So does she. “It’s been a long time.”

“Yeah.” He scoffs, looking away. He mutters under his breath, head to the side, and it takes everything she has not to roll her eyes. She’d always hated that.

And then they just stand there silent and stupid. Finn scuffs his feet along the concrete path. Rae stares at him for a while, then watches the path of a crimson leaf as it drifts to the ground. When she looks back, he’s squinting at her and she shakes her head.

“Was there something you needed, Finn? I can’t imagine you came all this way just to stand here. Don’t you live in Leeds now?” Some of her irritation bleeds through, despite her attempts at chilly distance. “I’m really busy, you know.”

“Yeah, wouldn’t want to waste the time of famous ghost hunter Rae Earl now, would I?” He snarks. Rae bites back a smile; she’s definitely won this time.

She shakes her head, slow and deliberate, and walks forward, side-stepping around him. “Nice seeing you, Finn. You haven’t changed a bit.” She calls carelessly over her shoulder.

She’s made it up the steps and is nearly at the doors of the building when he calls out. “Wait!” She hesitates, slowing her movements but reaching for the door handle anyway. “Please! Please, Rae, wait.”

This time she does turn around, so she gets to see his slumped shoulders and defeated expression as he climbs the stairs to stand in front of her once more. She’s surprised by his easy capitulation, by how quickly he gave up the fight. He’s almost meek before her, all dark eyes and dejection.

“What is it, Finn?” She crosses her arms beneath her breasts, not to draw attention to them, though she doesn’t miss his quick glance downward. She glances at the building behind her. “I really am busy. I’m late for a meeting.”

“I know you’re famous and all that now, but…” He trails off on a sigh, rubs the back of his neck uncomfortably. “Look, I need your help, okay?”

She can’t stop the quick bark of laughter that escapes her, though she’s not sure that she would if she had the choice. “YOU need MY help?” Even the bob of his Adam’s apple in his throat looks miserable. “Please, tell me. What on Earth do YOU need MY help with?”

“I…” Finn licks his lips and stares at his shoes. He rubs his hands over his thighs briskly, twice. She wonders if he’s still smoking like he used to, like he was untouchable, like nothing bad could ever happen to him. “Fuck this is hard.”

Rae peels one arm out and deliberately checks her watch, raising her eyebrows for him to get on with it. He shakes his head and huffs.

“Look, I… I’ve got a bit of a ghost problem, okay?”

There’s a moment of pregnant silence, where everything seems to wait to see what her response will be. She doesn’t know herself until it happens. She breaks out into breathless laughter, hunches over with the force of it.

“Jesus, you haven’t changed at all, have you?” Finn says, disgust painted all over his face. She giggles harder. “I should have known better than to think you’d… Fuck it. Thanks for nothing, Rae.”

“Wait, wait!” Rae calls around her mouthful of mirth, waving an arm at his retreating back. He doesn’t stop, so moves down three steps and tries again. “I’ll help you! Come back.”

When he turns around, his eyes are wild enough that Rae feels something shift inside her chest. All her good humor drains away. She walks to him.

“What’s going on, Finn? Are you seriously asking about paranormal phenomenon? I thought all that was ‘utter bollocks’? When did you start believing in ghosts?” She’s trying to soften her tone, but the old bitterness and resentment is hard to keep at bay. There’s a reason they haven’t seen each other in years.

Finn swallows heavily before replying, eyes still glinting with weary ferocity. “I didn’t. I don’t, not really. It’s just… my daughter.” He clenches his hands into tight balls at his sides. “It’s my daughter, Rae. You know I wouldn’t be back here, asking you if I weren’t desperate. But, she’s terrified and I’ve tried everything, and… this is what you do. Please help us.”

She’s stunned. Standing there with the nipping breeze whisking up strands of her hair, she might as well be made of stone. His eyes plead with her, but there’s nothing in her to be reached just then. She’s in lock down, scrambling to fortify all the walls that block her off from injury. They’ve stood firm and strong and unnoticed for years, but a single sentence from Finn Nelson and she’s suddenly seeing all the places where the stonework is crumbling and the mortar has rotted away.

“Daughter?” She asks finally, and Finn hurriedly pulls out his cell and brings up a picture. The daughter is round faced and solemn, cornsilk hair and eyes that are unmistakably Finn’s.

“Emmy.” He answers her unspoken questions. “She’s four.”

“Four?” She feels like she’s choking on the word, like her body is shutting down function to her vocal cords.

He raises wide, apologetic eyes to hers, looks up at her through his lashes like he always used to when he was in trouble. She used to think it was cute. Now it makes her want to scream.

“And her mum?”

“She gets Emmy for the summer holidays. She’s a teacher.” He’s scuffing his feet again.

“It’s…” She tries. “It’s…”

Finn just nods, eyes averted. There’s another long silence while Rae tries to stuff all these new feelings back down into the farthest corner of her to be dealt with later. She’s so steady now, so solid. She can’t afford to be unseated and set off course by Finn Nelson’s problems. She’s got the show to think about.

“You expect me to help Katie’s daughter? You expect me to come to Leeds and what, psychoanalyze Katie Springer’s kid into not believing in ghosts anymore?” She’s coughing out the words, not hissing them in anger, but struggling just to expel them from her body.

Finn takes a single step towards her, hunches down a little so he can meet her gaze. He looks right into her eyes and shakes his head, pleading openly. “No Rae, not Katie’s daughter. My daughter, my baby. Look at her, Rae. She’s so scared, and I’m her Dad and I don’t know what to do.” He holds up the phone again.

Rae retreats. She takes a handful of steps backwards and turns her back on him. She looks away, looks out over the yellowing lawn of the courtyard. She swallows thickly, listens to the heavy thrum of her blood pulsing through her veins.

“I know what I’m asking of you.” He says behind her. “I know that this isn’t fair. I know it’s shit of me to be here, to even try and see you again. I’m desperate, Rae. I don’t know what else to do. Please help me.”

She wants to leave, to just march straight forward and up the steps, into the building where he can’t follow. She wants to lock herself in that box of steel and iron and never see Finn Nelson’s face again, let alone the face of the child he and Katie fucking Springer made. But as she closes her eyes and lowers her head, trying to build the strength to walk away, another teary terrified face flashes before her eyes.

Jazz, all those years ago, when she’d come home freshly wounded and degreed. Rae’d taken the couch when she’d come back, as incentive to not let herself become idle and stick around too long. But Jazz had been having night terrors then, half-waking in the middle of the night and screaming like a banshee. Rae’d watched her leave for school hollow-eyed and exhausted, hurting for her sister but unsure of what to do. It only took a week before they were sharing a bed. But it wasn’t until Jazz explained how a demon came to her in the middle of the night and froze her, then sat on her chest and ate at her insides that Rae finally understood what was going on. Jazz had sleep paralysis. But lucky for her, she also had a sister with a head full of psychology and no idea what to do with it. And from there, Rae’s career was born.

Beautiful Jazz, eyes ringed in black, weeping in the middle of the night.

Rae can’t let another kid go through that fear if she can help it; it’s been her life’s mission to help people escape fear paralysis. It’s not this little girl’s fault who her parents are. She can’t help that any more than she can help her fear.

Rae squeezes her eyes shut tight for a moment, takes a deep, fortifying breath and spins around. Finn is wringing his hands, but his whole face lifts when he sees her turn towards him.

“I’ll help her.” She says solemnly. “But I have some conditions. How do you feel about being filmed?”

 


	2. Chapter 2

Emmy watches from the couch, blanket clutched tightly in her tiny fist, as he vacuums the living room of their little house for the third time this week. She used to be afraid of the vacuum, used to run shrieking to bounce on the sofa as soon as she heard the loud noise. Now she’s afraid of bigger, more frightening things and her feet dangle over the edge of the cushion.

“Alright, Em?” He asks as he finishes the last square and winds up the cord. She nods bleakly, and he holds back a sigh. She says so little these days. “C’mon then, bug, let’s get your hair done up, yeah?”

She follows close behind him as he walks down the hall to the laundry room and puts the vacuum away. He picks her up as he closes the door and carries her to the bathroom, where he sits her down on the counter and pulls out her hairbrush and headband from a drawer.

“You remember what we talked about, right?” She nods again and he’s careful not to yank the brush through her delicate strands as her head moves. “The people with the cameras are going to come and film us and our house, and the nice lady is going to ask you some questions. I’ll be right there the whole time, yeah?”

“Okay, Daddy.” Her tiny little voice rings through the bathroom and he smiles brightly at her.

She’s the reason for all of this. She’s worth doing all kinds of crap things, even working with his horrible ex-girlfriend. He’d do anything for Emmy. This is just today’s anything.

The doorbell rings. They both look towards the front of the house. Finn sets Emmy down, grabs her hand as they walk out to answer it. She hides behind his legs as he turns the knob. She does that a lot now. He lets out a sigh when he sees that it’s just Rae, dressed down in jeans and a sweater, hair loose and without her mask of professional makeup.

“Rae.” He opens the door wider to let her in, Emmy crowding back underneath him.

“Good morning.” Rae raises her eyebrows as she enters, a slight grin lurking around her mouth. She spins, eyes slowly taking in the room.

He feels nervous, like his whole life is on display before her critical eyes. He wonders what she’s seeing when she looks at his second hand floral sofa, at the dated carpet, at Emmy’s pile of toys in the corner. How common it must look compared to her glamorous life, how cheap and ordinary. She’s probably congratulating herself on escaping all this. He takes a deep breath and reaches out for Emmy’s hand.

When Rae completes her survey and turns back to him, her face is carefully neutral until she sees his daughter. Then it breaks out into a wide, effortless smile.

“Well, hello there, sweets. I didn’t see you when I came in. You must be Emmy.” Rae crouches down and Finn is surprised to feel Emmy breaking out of his grip to go over to her.

“I know you.” Emmy says, and Rae shoots a questioning smile up to Finn.

“I’m Rachel. Did your Daddy tell you I’d be coming to talk to you?”

“No.” Emmy retorts, cocking her head. “Well, yes. He told me a nice lady was coming. Are you nice?”

“I try to be.” Rae smiles softly. Finn shifts his weight on his feet. He’s not sure how to feel about this; it’s they’re like two dogs sniffing each other out before deciding on an opinion of the other. He tries to focus solely on Emmy, tries not to see Rae open and warm like this, like she used to be before.

Emmy bundles her blanket up into a wad in her arms. “I do, too. But it doesn’t always work, being nice.”

“I know exactly what you mean.” Rae nods, and Emmy takes a couple more steps towards Rae and touches her hair with a finger.

“I know you from the picture in Daddy’s office.” Emmy rubs a lock of Rae’s hair between her fingers, and Rae quickly shifts her gaze to his. He shrugs. “Your hair is pretty.”

“Thank you.” Rae reaches slowly and carefully to rub her hand down the back of Emmy’s head. “Yours is lovely, too.”

Just as suddenly as she’d moved forward, Emmy is back underneath his legs again. Rae rises to her feet, her forehead furrowed, but her eyes and mouth soft. She watches Emmy, so he watches her. It’s unsettling, Rae here in Stamford, in his house. She’s not wearing all her sharp edges today, all the things that have made it so easy to keep his anger, keep his distance.

“Daddy, when is Papa coming?” Emmy asks, tugging at his shirt.

When he looks down at her big dark eyes and feels the familiar pleased squeeze in his chest, he feels steadier. He cups the back of her head. “Soon, bug.”

“Your Dad is coming?” They’d moved back to Stamford at the beginning of the year to be closer to Gary. That’s when all the problems had started.

Finn shrugs again. “Emmy won’t be in her room alone. I thought it might go easier with the filming if we had some extra help, someone to stay with her. When will the crew get here? You obviously aren’t ready yet.”

She narrows her eyes at him, and he nearly sighs in relief. “Excuse me?”

He jerks his chin towards her. “You look… you’re, uh… normal still. You haven’t been through hair and makeup, I take it. How long does that take?”

Rae scoffs and looks away for a few moments. When she turns back, her smile looks a little bit dangerous, a little bit more like the one he’s seen in pictures. Her voice is measured when she replies, like the voice he uses to explain things to Em when she’s being difficult.

“The camera crew isn’t coming today.” She says through her teeth. “They’ll come tomorrow in the morning to get some shots of the house and interviews. I’ll come in the afternoon to do our on-screen interview. Today,” she takes a breath, smiles at Emmy where she’s peeking out around Finn’s thigh, “today I just wanted to get to know Emmy a little bit. See if I can’t help her feel better about… things.” He glances down and he and Emmy share a worried look. “I thought maybe we could do something fun. The museum, perhaps?”

“I’m sorry, what?” It’s snotty, and Emmy tightens her grip on his jeans.

“I thought that the three of us, or the four if Gary would like to join us, could spend the day getting to know each other.” She smiles down at Emmy, then glares at him, eyes bulging. “That way I could help Emmy more.”

“The camera crew isn’t coming today?” He grits his teeth. He doesn’t like to get angry in front of Emmy, but it’s likely going to be impossible to avoid it with Rae around. “You know I have to take time off work for this? Emmy and I won’t be able to go on holiday this year. And your crew doesn’t even bother to show up?”

“Finn…”

“I had my doubts about all this, but I thought, ‘hey, at least she’ll be professional.’ Not all of us are famous, Rae. We can’t just do whatever we want with other people’s lives.” He’s breathing heavy when he’s finished, and Rae is looking wide eyed at Emmy. He glances down to see his daughter looking scared, her blanket clutched up against her chin.

“Finn.” Rae tries to mollify him, and he sees it again, that flash of the girl she was once upon a time before everything went to hell. “This is for Emmy, right?” She gestures at his daughter. “We both just want to help Emmy.”

He glances down again, meets his daughter’s eyes, so like his own. He smoothes down her hair and sighs softly, lets a smile warm his face for her. “What do you say, Em? Fancy the museum?”

Emmy cocks her head thoughtfully and nods decisively. “I’m going to go put on my boots.” She eyes Rae when her hands detach from Finn’s leg, keeps fixed on Rae as she trails her hand along the hallway. They both watch her go.

“I’m sorry.” Rae says when Emmy is out of the room. He’s shocked at the quick apology, narrows his eyes at her. “I should have called about the filming. I’ve just…” She glances towards the hallway again. “I’ve been thinking that we shouldn’t put her on camera. It’s not fair to expose her like that. I wanted to talk to her, see if I can’t help her outside all of the rest of this.”

“You don’t want to film her?” He’s wary and he lets her see.

Rae looks down at the toes of her shoes, raises her head on an inhale, shrugs slightly. “It’s up to you, of course. But I thought it might be better to leave her out of it. The show will work fine with just you. It was mostly going to be just you anyway.”

His shoulders sag in relief. “Thank God. I’ve been so worried about what this would do to her, about how much harder the show might make this whole thing. Do you really think you can help her?”

Rae looks at him for a long minute in silence, and it’s like her examining his house all over again. He’s exposed. After a minute, one side of her mouth quirks up in a smile. “I’m going to try. We’ll figure it out.”

Emmy clomps back down the hall, heavy in her green rubber boots. She clasps Finn’s hand and looks over at Rae seriously. “You’re going to make them go away, aren’t you?”

Rae moves in front of them and crouches down once more to look into Emmy’s eyes. “Yes, sweets. I’m going to make them go away.”

—

“So, how does this work?” Finn asks, setting a steaming mug before her.

Rae holds up a hand, pen still wrapped between her fingers. He sighs as he slides into the chair across from her, sipping his tea and watching her as she frantically scribbles into a notebook. She can feel his eyes boring into her, feel the weight of his impatience even from where she is lost in her notes. She forces herself not to look up as a wave of déjà vu washes over her.

They’ve only just finished a difficult, inscrutable session with Emmy. She’s trying to record her thoughts and impressions as best she can in the small window of time before they’re to start filming for the night. She has to put this down, shake it off somehow if she’s to be at all personable on camera tonight.

She lifts her tea to her lips without raising her head, her right hand still working its way across the page. She’d expected to have a better handle on the girl, on how to help her by now. In addition to the day at the museum, she’d spent a bitterly cold morning at the park swinging and chatting with Emmy and Gary Nelson while Finn supervised the initial filming and recorded his introductory interviews. Though Emmy is taciturn like her father, prone to thoughtful silence until she’s decided exactly what to say, Rae’d felt like they’d made fair progress. She’d discovered that Finn’s daughter is smart and thoughtful and overwhelmingly cautious.

Rae’d been sure that once the girl went under the light hypnosis that Jazz’s psychologist had recommended, it’d be clear to see what the issues were that built themselves into this superstitious fear. Rae’d taken three seminars on child counseling and the “boogie monster” phenomenon in the time since she’d introduced Finn to the producers, read every article on childhood trauma that had been published in the last year. She’d done the research, prepared herself as best she could, though she’d been half certain from the get-go that Emmy’s fear would stem from a sense of insecurity from the split of her parents and her lack of permanence.

But what the girl had said under the hypnosis… it wasn’t anything like Rae expected. It’d been confusing, troubling, complex. Emmy’s mind was a much darker place than Rae had anticipated, and not only had there been no clear connections between her ghosts and her past, the ghosts were far more prominent and pronounced than even Finn had known. He’d been wide-eyed and trembling through the whole session.

Rae finishes her last notes with a flourish and a frown. She takes a deep, cleansing breath when she sets down her pen, flexes her hand. She’d been tightly clutching the pen in her haste to get it all down. She takes another sip of tea before looking up at Finn. Another wave of déjà vu passes over her.

He’s got his arms crossed, his mug resting on his forearm near the crook of his elbow, hunched slightly over the tabletop. He’s looking out towards the back window of the kitchen, watching the gray afternoon deepen into navy night. He looks at ease, despite the worry painted into the new creases on his forehead and at the corners of his eyes. This is his territory, even as it’s familiar ground with her writing and him waiting. She wonders if he’s feeling the discomfiting familiarity too.

“Sorry.” She murmurs quietly. The press of the sun setting feels heavy in the silent kitchen. He glances over without moving anything but his head. “I just wanted to get that down before I lost it.”

“That wasn’t what you expected.” It’s not a question, but Rae shrugs and shakes her head in reply. Finn nods, uncrosses his arms and looks down at the table. “It’s worse than I thought.”

She studies the angles of his shoulders, the way his knuckles move as he scratches his mug. “It’s good that you came to me.”

“You can help her?” He asks, tight and hopeful.

“I hope so.” She replies. He frowns, so she adds, “I think so. She may need to see somebody ongoingly.”

He leans back in his chair, rubs the back of his neck and nods. She stares at his mostly empty mug left behind on the table and it makes something prickle along her spine.

“Alright. How’s this going to go tonight?” His jaw is tight, irritated. She huffs.

“They’ll come and set up the equipment, the cameras and EVP and stuff. Margot, the director, will have a clearer picture for you when she gets here.”

“You can’t explain it to me?” He juts the words out, like his jaw.

“What’s your problem?” She challenges. She likes him so much better when Emmy is around, when he works to soften all his issues into mild, oatmeal-y pleasantness for his daughter’s sake.

“You act like everyone should just know what you know, like everybody in the world has to make themselves be on your same level.” He gets up from the table abruptly, retreats to press back against the kitchen counter on the other side of them room. “Not all of us are famous TV people, Rae. You could give me a little to go on.”

“I’m not withholding from you, Finn. I’ve never done this before. I don’t know what’s going to happen either.”

She wonders if he’s deliberately being irritating, or if he’s actually this much of a twat. She’s done her best over the last couple of days to give him the benefit of the doubt. His daughter is scared and he can’t do anything to help her, so of course he’s going to be prickly. But enough is enough.

“Why do you keep doing that?” She wants to stand too, to be on the same level. She flattens her palms against the table.

“What?”

“You keep telling me I’m famous. Famous ghost hunter, famous tv person. You’ve said it at least four times this week.” Finn scoffs, looking out the window again. “I’m not some famous stranger, Finn. I’m not someone you don’t know. I’m still the same person I always was.”

He narrows his eyes at her, shoots daggers across the space between them. “Well, maybe I never really knew who you were in the first place.”

She’s hurt, she can’t help it. He’s looking at her like she’s disgusting, like she’s some evil creature rather than someone he used to wake up in the middle of the night to whisper affection to. She rises and takes her mug to the sink, just for a reason to stand up. She knows what it is, but she can’t help need a little bit of control. She turns to him, leans her hip up against the sink. He doesn’t look over.

She sighs at his childishness. “Alright, let’s have it then. I’d hope to make it through this week without some ridiculous confrontation, but maybe it’s better. All this tension will show up on camera, so we’d best have it out before we’re on film.”

Finn grunts, tossing his hands up in the air. “Right. All you care about is the camera. It’s all about this bleeding show.”

Her jaw hangs open. How can he think that? There are a dozen other people she could have gone to, a whole stack of letters begging her for help, but here she is in fucking Stamford, battling her own ghosts just to help him.

“I’m trying to help you.” She hisses, and he laughs mirthlessly. “I’m trying to help your daughter. And all I get is constant resentment and mockery. I don’t have to be here, Finn. Show or no show, I’m here for you.”

“No, you’re here despite me, Rae.” He’s stalked closer, only a couple of feet away. “You’ve got your own agenda, just like always, and I’m just waiting for you to show your true colors.”

“My true colors!” She yells. “My true colors! How can you even say that?! What about your true colors, Finn? Huh?” She gets closer, finger poking in his direction. “I’ve been looking at your true colors all week. I’m here to help the child you had when you cheated on me!”

“I never cheated on you!” He yells back, nearly right in her face.

“Right.” It’s quieter now, she’s lost the steam to yell back. Tears are stinging in the back of her eyes, so she turns her back on him. She hates the tears, hates him, hates this. She feels tight and red and raw, opened right back up for Finn Nelson to wound again.

“I never cheated on you, Rae.” He’s quieter now too, right behind her. “I didn’t sleep with her until after we broke up. Until after you broke us up.”

“I was right all along though, wasn’t I?” Her voice comes out small in her effort to keep the emotion of out it. “You wanted her. It was only a matter of time.”

He makes a noise. She takes it as conformation, spins around in order to catch his guilty face. There’d been a time, a couple of months after the break up, when she’d been nearly certain that it was all a huge mistake. She’s always known who she is, that she can make a terrible something out of nothing. She’d always been prone to misinterpreting things in catastrophic ways. She’d nearly gone crawling back. Thank God she hadn’t; she wouldn’t have been able to handle his unfaithfulness back then. She’s not sure she’s doing a good job of handling it now.

He doesn’t look guilty when she looks back at him. He looks fiery, stubborn, intractable. She wants to rail against him like in the movies, pound her fists dramatically against his chest, give into weeping in his arms. But she doesn’t. She holds herself stiff, cold. He studies her face.

“You’re wrong.” He says starkly. She thinks she flinches. “I never wanted her. Even after, even when I was with her, I only ever wanted you. But you were so sick in your head, you’d convinced yourself so much. I wasn’t who you made me out to be. Until you ended it, and then I decided to be exactly who you thought I was. Might as well.”

She doesn’t move. She’s not sure she can. He’s looking through her, sneering back through time at the Rae she was five years ago. In another place, she’d sneer at her old self too, condemn past Rae for driving him away with her paranoia and insecurity and fear. But she doesn’t do that anymore. The past is the past, and being angry about it only hurts the Rae she is now.

Finn moves his hand, brings it to hover in the air near her shoulder like he’s going to touch her. She trembles. “You broke us up, Rae. Your problems, what you turned me into in your head.” The anger fades out of his words and he brings his hand down, his palm warm as it cups her shoulder through the thin fabric of her blouse. “You wanted to be rid of me. And look what happened when you did.”

She looks up into his eyes, confused at his sudden shift in tone. He’s all over the place in a way he never was when they were at Uni. For a half second, she’s tempted to explore this most recent mood. She thinks of moving a half step forward, of placing her hand on his chest and using the beat of his heart to decipher what he means. Something builds in her, squeezes all the words out of her. Her foot lifts, falls down just a fraction closer to him.

Outside, they hear the unmistakable slamming of the van door in the driveway. Whatever it was compressing her snaps, and she takes three shaky steps backwards, out of his reach. His arm falls limply.

“Are you done?” She asks. She wants it to be clinical, professional, but her chest hasn’t loosened yet and it comes out slightly breathless. “Did you get it out enough to do this?”

Finn looks disappointed in her, and a strange echo of it resounds in her head. One of the crew shouts to someone else. Rae wrenches her eyes towards the front door.

“I guess it’s time.” Finn replies. He shifts his shoes against the floor.

Rae walks back to the table, picks up her notebook and tucks it into her big, professional leather bag. She focuses all her attention on the task, feels each of her breaths moving through her body. Her heart is pounding. She tells herself it’s because of the show, because of her anticipation, because of the “ghosts” they’re about to hunt.

Not the past lurking on the other side of the room, the most frightening ghost of all.


	3. Chapter 3

As it turns out, ghost busting is very much like being at Uni again: sitting in the darkness with Rae Earl, not saying much, straining to hear anything so that the sound of her breathing doesn’t overcome him. It feels strange, but he’s not sure if that’s evidence of Emmy’s ghosts. More likely, it’s just the situation. The whole thing makes him vaguely twitchy.

The camera crew had retreated to the van just after ten, leaving he and Rae alone in the heavily monitored building. They’d set cameras up in every room of his tiny, ancient house, drilling holes into plaster older than his great-grandparents. Finn had cringed the whole time, resenting the intrusion of all the modern technology into the historic building. With each mechanical buzz of a screw entering the wall, his hackles rose further and further.

Over the last few months, he’s felt a little paranoid in the house. It’s mostly his worry about Emmy, mostly his subconscious reacting to her fear, but he’s felt… watched for a while now. At night, when she goes to bed, the stillness of the house doesn’t feel restful, it feels ominous. He’s never said it out loud, never admitted it to anyone… but he’s started to worry that Emmy’s fears aren’t just in her head.

The watched feeling, the tension, is worse tonight than it’s ever been. Logically, he knows it’s because of the cameras, because of the fight he’d had with Rae before all this started. Logically, he knows there’s no pressure building in his house, nothing imminent. Logically.

Doesn’t stop it from feeling that way, though.

He and Rae haven’t talked much since the incident in the kitchen. She’d gone off to wardrobe or whatever and come back as the new Rae, camera Rae. She’s intimidating like this, hair glossy and curled, makeup dramatic and precise, if a bit heavy. She said she has to wear a lot for it to show up in the night vision. The makeup lady brushed his fringe up, dressed him in a pale Henley like he used to wear at school. Rae’d nodded, just once, when she’d seen him.

Rae never seems to forget that they’re being recorded, doesn’t seem to have any difficulty keeping her professional mask on. Sometimes she asks him a pre-approved question, especially as they rotate between rooms. He answers her as clinically, as dryly as possible. He doesn’t want to add any sensationalism to this, if he can help it. He’s seen the shows, the way they add the creepy sound effects, the dramatic re-enactments. He’d agreed to do this to get her help, but he doesn’t have to make it easy.

They’re in the family room now, sitting stiffly together on the loveseat. The moonlight filters in through the slats of the blinds, streaks of pearl gray that stripe the carpet and Rae’s back. She has some sort of lighted recording device on the coffee table in front of them, and she hunches over her knees to ask questions at it, pleading for anything in the room to make itself known. An hour ago, she’d swept along the walls with a different handheld device, measuring electromagnetic fields or some rubbish, clucking every few feet as the meter moved around.

“Please, if you’re here, I would like to talk to you. I might be able to help you.” Rae calls, genial and gentle.  

Finn has to stop himself from scoffing audibly. She might help a ghost, but there’d be a price. He tightens his arms where they’re crossed over his chest, glances up at the tiny red light that indicates one of the cameras is mounted on the wall across from them.

“Is there a little girl here you like to talk to?” Rae asks, and Finn shifts uncomfortably in his seat. His anxiety is ratcheting up, his shoulders getting tighter by the minute. He looks over at her, disgruntled and irritated. Apparently, she’d had a much different idea of keeping Emmy out of things than he had.

She waits, pauses to let the imaginary ghost speak into the microphone. Even if it was somehow real, there’s no way Emmy’s ghost would be so cooperative.

“You’re scaring her, you know.” Rae’s voice is a little stiffer, a little less coolly professional. Her thigh is touching his, just above the knee. She still sits wide legged. “But  _I_  won’t be scared, you can talk to me.”

He wants to get up, pace or something. He’s full of restless energy, coiled tension. All of his muscles feel tight, even his skin. Rae stands, bending over to turn off the recorder. She stretches, arms high above her head, blouse pulling tight over her tits. She shakes back her hair and turns to look at him.

“I’m getting nothing in here, either. There’s no readings on any of the equipment, no feedback, nothing.”

“What did you expect?” He asks. He’s not trying to be a dick, not challenging her, though he’s sure that his stiff body language doesn’t convey that very well. “I mean, you debunk all this. Your whole career is in helping people realize it’s shite. You don’t really think it’s real, do you?”

“There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio.”  She sounds tired. He wonders if under all that makeup, she looks worn, if her eyes are encompassed by dark circles like his.

“What does that mean?”

“It means, no, I don’t think it’s real. But it’s a big world, and I don’t know everything.” She sighs, long and slow, stretches an arm across her body to pull at her opposite shoulder.

“Since when don’t you know everything?” He smiles into the darkness.

“Har har.” She says deliberately. “Shall we move on? I think Emmy’s room is the last one we haven’t investigated yet.”

“S’pose.” Finn unfolds himself from the couch, stretching and twisting his neck. Rae waits as he jiggles his legs, forcing blood back into his limbs. He doesn’t know how long they’ve been sitting. He presses a button on his watch, winces at the bright green illumination. It’s just after two A.M.

“I’ll go get the electrothermometer.” Rae murmurs, wandering off into the kitchen to retrieve another obscure piece of equipment. He picks up the recorder, turning it over in his hands as he examines it. He clicks it on, holds it right up next to his mouth.

“Hello, ghostie. If you’re real, which you probably aren’t, there’s something I want you to know.” He pauses, glaring around into the empty room. A chill tingles down his back; he’s freaking himself out. “That little girl belongs to me. I won’t let anything bad happen to her, no matter what. If you are real, I’m warning you. Leave Emmy alone. Or even being sodding dead won’t help you.”

He pauses like she’d taught him, leaving space for whatever it is to participate in the conversation. The house is still, completely oppressively still the way it gets late at night. He’s breathing a little heavily, despite himself, squinting around the dark room. He wishes Rae was still with him.

A resounding crash sounds from the kitchen, startling him and making him jump. He jogs down the hall, heart racing. He flicks the switch on automatically when he gets to the kitchen, but the room stays black. They’d cut power to the lights, he remembers suddenly. It’s part of the investigation, the total lack of light.

“Rae?” He calls out, eyes straining to find her in the darkness. There’s no reply, so he calls again, “Rae!” He steps further into the kitchen, slowly, deliberately, arms out in front of him so he doesn’t run in to anything. “This isn’t funny, Rae. Where are you?”

His boots crunch over something on the floor. For a moment, he can’t decide what to do. Everything in him tells him not to look down, that he can’t possibly let his eyes stop their search of the room. The hairs on the back of his neck are standing up again. He pauses, looks three hundred and sixty degrees around the room. Then he bends down, back straight, moving only with his knees.

His hands move over the floor gingerly, feeling out the hard, crumbly fragments scattered about. His fingers move over something smooth and curved, and he carefully picks it up, moving it closer to his face so he can see. It’s a piece of pale blue ceramic, the handle of his mug.

“Finn!” Rae says behind him suddenly, and he jumps up, cutting a finger on the shard of mug in his hand. He winces, sticks the digit into his mouth.

“Where were you?” His voice is loud; it has to be, with the volume of the pounding of his heart. He can’t see her face, can’t hardly see anything.

“I went to the toilet.” She’s trying to soothe him, her voice low and even. She feels through the darkness towards him, put a hand on his bicep when she reaches him. “What’s going on?”

“The mug broke.” He says dumbly. His hand feels wet, and he glances down to see blood dripping down his finger into his palm. He moves away to grab a tea towel. Rae moves with him. “You weren’t in here?”

“No.” She says, and she’s close enough that he can see her frown. He wraps his hand in the towel and squeezes it in his fist. It makes him feel better somehow. “I bumped the table on my way out, though. I must have knocked it. Do you have a bandage for that?”

“In the cupboard.” She moves away and starts rummaging through cabinets, but it’s too dark for her to be able to see anything. “Here, I’ve got it.”

He pulls down the box, but Rae takes it from him, ushering him against the counter and taking his hand in both of hers. She peels the towel away, dabbing at the cut, then carefully putting a band-aid over it. When she’s finished, she keeps his hand, and they both stare down at it for a long moment.

“Thank you.” He says. She nods. It’s a moment, he thinks. Or maybe a potential moment. She’s camera Rae still, but in the darkness all he can see is the familiar curve of her cheek and the long sweep of her hair. Something shifts in his chest.

A light flickers from the front room and they both turn towards it. They’re frozen, and he’s pretty sure she feels it just like he does. The tautness, the heaviness of the house around them.

“What was that?” She whispers. They watch, silent and tense for several long seconds. Nothing happens, no light, no sound. They exchange a look, and in tandem, start to creep forward towards the other room. Rae keeps hold of his hand.

It’s a long walk back to the living room, the longest it’s ever been. Their steps are halting and stilted; they pause every half dozen to listen. When they finally, eventually approach the doorway, he walks in front of her and peers into the room. The recorder is sitting on the coffee table still, light on and flickering faintly.

Finn laughs, stepping into the room and turning it off. “I left it on. The battery is dying, that’s why it flickered.”

Rae doesn’t say anything, but she follows him in and takes the recorder, turns it over in her hands. She clicks it off and looks up at him, giggles breathlessly and puts a hand on her chest.

“Okay, that freaked me out a little bit.” She laughs. He thinks about hugging her, thinks that they could both use the comfort of it, the reassurance that they’re okay, that they both still have physical presence. She rubs her face, walks around the table away from him.

“It’s late.” He offers, an excuse to make her feel better. To make him feel better. “We’re letting our imaginations get away from us.”

“Yeah.” She nods, sniffs. “Let’s go do Emmy’s room so we can call it quits.” She shifts her weight from foot to foot for a minute, just looking at him. Finally, she smiles ruefully. “Will you come with me to get the electrothermometer?”

Finn chuckles as he follows her into the kitchen again. They step around the broken mug, and Finn illuminates his watch so that Rae can see the equipment laid out there. She grabs a pair of black boxes, fiddles with them, hands him one. He looks down to see a small blue LED screen with some numbers on it.

“It measures changes in temperature.” She explains. “It’s believed that an apparition uses energy from its surroundings to manifest, causing sudden drops in temperature.” It’s clearly information for the show, a sound bite for the viewers, but she grins at him and adds, “You just point it at things. Think you can handle that, Nelson?”

“I dunno, girl. Sounds complicated.” He teases, and she laughs brightly. It’s better than all the equipment for dispelling the last of his fears. It’s almost normal between them, for the first time in a long time. He lets out a breath of relief.

“You’ll figure it out. C’mon.”

She leads the way down the hall, and he gets the prickly watched feeling again. He glances up, another camera blinks its red light at him from the corner. She holds her black box before her, looks down into its screen. When they get to Emmy’s room, Rae swings the door open with one hand, but stays standing in the doorway as she points her thingy into the room.

“Huh.” She says, taking a step back to move the scanner in the hall. She backs into him, but he doesn’t move away. She glances at him, and the light from Emmy’s window pouring into the hall is enough for him to see her eye roll. “Look.”

She holds out her scanner, and Finn looks down into the screen. At first, it’s just a mess of different brightly colored blobs, but then his brain rearranges it into the familiar shapes of his hall. The walls are green and yellow, the doorknob where Rae’s hand has been is red.

“Ok?” He’s got no idea what she’s seeing. She pulls his arm until the two of them are standing in the open doorway. She runs the scanner over the hall again.

“This is thermal imaging. The cooler it is, the bluer. The hotter, red. See how the hall is mostly yellow and green?” He nods. She smells faintly floral this close up. Rae swings the scanner into Emmy’s room. “Look how much cooler it is in here, all green and blue. That’s strange.”

“It’s always been that way in her room.”

“Check the temperature.” Rae nods down at his hand, so he lifts the scanner and does as she asks. It’s five degrees cooler in her room. They share a look. Rae steps into the room.

She runs the scanner along the walls like she’d done before, slow and deliberate. He’s quiet, staying in the doorway to watch her work. She runs it around the window for a long minute, then turns to him with a smile, holding the box up.

“It’s the window. You should replace it, it’s freezing in here.”

He runs his thermometer over the area, confirms her findings. Rae sets her box on Emmy’s nightstand and sits on the bed, leaning back on her hands behind her. He sits next to her, close, thighs touching on purpose. It’s cold.

She takes his thermometer, turns it off and sets it beside hers. He mimics her position, and after a couple of minutes, they both slide back to lean up against the wall, legs in front of them. Rae jiggles her foot slowly. It’s achingly familiar, something he’d forgotten about in all but sense memory. He forces his muscles to loosen one at a time.

“Tell me something about Emmy.” Rae says, and it feels sudden in the stillness.

“What do you want to know?”

“I dunno.” She leans her head back against the wall, rocks it back and forth a bit. “Tell me… a happy memory you have of her.”

Finn leans his head back too, smiles at the ceiling. “Last year, Emmy and I were at the grocers together. We had to buy a pie, for a party or summat, I don’t remember.” He chuckles. “Emmy was sitting in the shopping cart, and I put the pie behind her. I was walking along, doing the shopping, and I look down and Emmy’s poked through the cellophane and helped herself to handfuls of pie. She’d eaten almost half of it, sitting there in the shopping cart, scooping it with her hands.”

Rae laughs again, warm and soft like her shoulder pressed against his. He thinks that if he was looking at the camera now, the room would be noticeably redder for the sound of it. He glances over, catches a flicker of movement on the screen. His heart pounds again, that same anxious tension from earlier flooding his system like it’d never really left.

“Rae.” He whispers, and even he can hear the fear in his voice. She turns her head towards him, eyes wide. “Get the camera.”

She seems shaky, reluctant to move away. She snatches the camera quickly, presses harder into him when she returns. They stare together at the screen where it rests in her lap. There’s nothing, no movement, no warm spots, nothing out of the ordinary. They watch for several minutes in silence. At some point, Rae’s hand finds his between them and wraps her fingers around his. But it’s nothing, all nothing.

“What did you see?”

“Dunno. Must have been my imagination.” He says, eyes still fixed on the globs of blue and green on the thermometer. She looks at him until he glances up at her. She smiles.

“I think we’ve had enough for tonight. Let’s turn some bloody lights on, yeah?”

Finn laughs, relieved that he’s not alone in being scared of the dark tonight. The bed squeaks as they lever themselves off. Rae pulls her phone out of her back pocket and turns the flashlight on when they get to the hallway. Finn eyes her, and she laughs at the face he’s making. He can’t believe she’s had that in her literal back pocket all night and not used it.

“Can’t mess up the investigation.” She mutters, so he pulls the phone from her hand and takes it to the back hall where the fuse box is hidden behind a cabinet door. He flicks the lights back on, and from behind him he can hear Rae’s sigh of relief as a warm glow flickers to life around them. She puts a hand on his back, over his shoulder blade. He pretends to examine more of the fuses until she moves away.

In the kitchen, he puts the kettle on and rummages through the cabinet for a packet of biscuits. He thinks they both need the sugar. Rae slumps over the kitchen table, head in her hands.

“How’d it go?” One of the crew members says, coming in through the back door with a yawn and a broad smile. His name is maybe Randy? Finn can’t quite remember.

“Honestly?” Rae asks, looking up at Finn before looking back at possible Randy. “I have no idea.”

He chuckles, striding across the kitchen and putting a paw of a hand over Rae’s shoulder. “It looked good from our end, but who knows. We’ll go over the footage tomorrow.” Rae nods, obviously weary. She squints into the lights. “For now, you should get some rest. Both of you.”

He wonders if there’s something going on with Rae and Randy. It could be, the way they’re looking at each other. The kettle whistles and Finn takes it off the burner, pulls fresh mugs from the cupboard, makes the tea the way she likes it, even though it’s too sweet for his taste. When he slumps into his own chair, Randy’s boxing up the equipment from the table and Rae’s giving him a grateful smile.

“See, Finn. We made it through the whole night with no ghosts.” She closes her eyes in pleasure when she takes a sip of her tea. “It’s all going to be just fine.”

He nods, but he’s thinking it’s almost the opposite. Because if there aren’t ghosts, it means Emmy is anything but fine, and that the problem is likely just starting.

—

She feels hungover. She’d forgotten to turn her ringer off, and the shrill cry from the nightstand is like shards of glass being shoved behind her eyes. She bats at the nightstand until the noise stops, collapses her face back into the pillow.

It starts ringing again.

She groans, fumbles around once more, tugs the cord out from the phone. She squints at the screen, growls at the name, slides it on.

“This better be good.” She warns, scowling at the sleepy rumble of her voice.

“Rachel.” Sunny says, terse and edgy, and those two syllables are enough to have her sitting up in bed. They call him Sunny because he’s always so relentlessly cheerful. Something’s wrong. Her heart thrums heavily and anxiety creeps along her limbs.

“What is it?”

“It’s… You need to come down here.”

She looks over at the clock, it’s not even noon. Panic starts to itch just underneath her skin. “What do mean? What’s wrong?”

“You just need to come down here. As soon as you can.” Sunny is being careful, she thinks. He won’t give anything away over the phone. She forces herself to exhale slowly, try to slow her rapid heartbeat.

“Okay. I’m coming.” She clicks off the phone, stumbles into the bathroom. She doesn’t bother with makeup, doesn’t even brush her hair. She splashes cold water on her face and puts on jeans and a hoodie.

She’s downstairs at the production suite five minutes later, but she stops outside the door to just breathe. Breathe. Whatever it is, she can handle it.

The door opens, and she’s whisked into the commotion of the room. Everybody looks at her, wary and wild-eyed. A production assistant hands her a cup of coffee, the three techs are all typing frantically into their laptops. Margot is sitting on the couch with her chin cupped in her hands, eyes closed.  Sunny stands when he sees her, puts a hand on her shoulder but doesn’t say anything. He leads her to his chair, and the production assistant drags another across the room for him.

“Okay.” He says as he sits, rubbing his hands together. “Okay.”

He looks at her solemnly for a moment, then turns and clicks on the video on his laptop. Rae takes a sip of her coffee to wet her dry throat. It’s the footage of last night, she can see that right away. She and Finn are sitting together on the loveseat. She’s asking questions, trying to capture some electronic voice phenomena.

“Did we capture EVP?” She asks Sunny, incredulous. It’s their first case, the first episode. They can’t have really caught something, can they? It can’t actually be real, no matter what Shakespearean philosophy she’d given Finn last night.

“Just watch.” Sunny nudges her, and she turns back to watch the video. The footage flickers through the other cameras briefly, the empty hallway, Finn’s neatly made bed, the dark kitchen. She squints, but there’s nothing to see. She watches as her video self stands and stretches- and Finn watches- and then goes into the kitchen. The camera stays with him, talking into the recorder. There’s no audio, so she doesn’t know what he’s saying. Then it changes over to her in the kitchen.

She watches herself touch the different pieces of tech, then move out of the room to go to the loo. She bumps the table, rattling all the stuff left on it. But it all stills after a second. Except for one thing. The mug. Rae hunches forward, trying to get closer, to see better. The mug moves on its own. Slow, at first. Just a shudder, then a scoot. And then it shoots off the table and crashes onto the floor.

She pauses the video, heart pounding, breathing labored. Sunny moves over her and clicks something, then presses play again. The mug appears on the screen again, grainy but bigger. She watches it get pushed off the table once more. Then twice more.

She pauses the video again, leans back in her chair. Everyone is silent, and she feels grateful for the light pouring in from the open curtains, as gray and lackluster as it is. Everything is suspended while they wait for her reaction.

“Oh my God.” She says finally, and this releases everyone. They return back to their duties with a dull hum of productivity. Only Margot remains still.

“There’s more.” Sunny mumbles beside her and she starts, echoing him.

“More?”

“We did catch some EVP. Potential EVP.” He leans over again, tabs through to pull up another video. “But there’s this.”

It’s the thermal camera. She feels dread creeping through her, thick and cloying. She knows what this will be. This video has sound, so she hears as she tells Finn to replace the window. The camera shows only a corner of the room from where she’d so carelessly set it down.

The bed springs squeak from behind the camera. The outline of her foot appears, red in the foreground of the green behind. Her foot moves back and forth distractingly. Nothing happens for a while, just her foot moving. Eventually she hears herself ask about Emmy.

By the time she’s finished asking for a happy memory, it’s sidled half way onto the screen. An orangey shape, not quite as hot as her foot, but definitely hotter than the rest of the room. Finn chuckles, and it’s moved into the path of the camera now.

It’s a person.

A person who they hadn’t seen or heard or felt in the room with them last night. But it’s definitely a person on the screen- head, torso, arms, legs. It looks like a man, tall and heavy. It’s a person.

A cold, sickly fear has risen through her body. She puts a hand over her mouth, blinks back tears. She’s panting, not quite able to catch her breath, hunched over herself before the computer. Sunny’s watching her, she knows. They’re probably all watching her. But all she can feel is the dread.

The figure on the video shifts back and forth while Finn speaks, until he says her name. And then it just disappears. On the video, she’s picked up the camera again and there’s nothing on it. She remembers the relief, the way she’d had to touch him as he’d watched for something. Her heart pounds harder now than it had at any point last night, it’s booming in her ears. She worries that she might pass out.

“Rae?” Sunny asks, and she realizes she’s been sitting mute, staring at a blank screen.

“This…” She pulls her shaky hand from her lips. “You’re not fucking with me?”

Sunny shakes his head, eyes sorrowful. Rae closes her eyes for just a second.

“We need to call Finn.”


	4. Chapter 4

The dolor in the room is palpable. It’s a sort of helplessness, a pungent, sharp-edged anxiety that he’d felt pouring out from under the door when he’d stood paralyzed in the hallway, not quite willing to face what lay inside. The fear is cloying, viscous, pinballing from person to person and building to fill the room like smoke rising. It reminds him of nothing so much as those hospital waiting rooms from when Nan first got sick, when the room itself seemed to encourage the panic, like it was sucking it into the walls to make a barrier against the outside world, against hope.

There’s a girl in the corner of the room, sniffling as she mutters frantically into her cell phone. She doesn’t remove her glasses as she rubs at her eyes, and they lift beneath her knuckles. He thinks of Archie, longs for his best mate, to be wrapped in Archie’s spindly limbs. A ginger kid mutters under his breath as he clicks through something on the laptop on the table in front of him.  Randy stares out the window with his arms crossed, back to the room, unmoving.

It’s like somebody died. He laughs dryly in his head. Somebody did, if there’s a ghost.

Rae is sitting beside the director on a small couch, hunched over herself, hollow-eyed and pale. She wears a gray university sweatshirt and wrinkled jeans. She looks younger, reduced somehow. She looks scared.

He sits on the coffee table in front of her, bends over his knees. Rae shifts so that her hands are before her, like she expects him to take them. He stares down at them for a moment, until it’s too late to pick them up and make it seem casual.

“Finn…” She says, and he looks up to find her mouth working and eyebrows drawn. “I don’t, I don’t know what to say.”

“Show me the video.” He offers, turning his body towards the tech guys still frowning at their monitors. He doesn’t know what to say, what to do. He’s got no frame of reference for what to do when you find out your house is haunted.

A big guy with a full beard glances over at the women on the couch, then nods solemnly and unplugs his laptop from the web of cords. Finn moves over to sit beside Rae on the sofa as the guy sets the laptop on the coffee table and queues it up. Rae shifts beside him. No part of her touches him. He looks a question at her, but her eyes are on the bearded guy.

“Thanks, Sunny.” She says quietly. Her hand trembles where it rests on her knee; she tucks it into the pocket of her sweatshirt. She turns towards him, swallows as she meets his eyes. “Are you ready?”

There’s something wrong with his breathing. The cold fear that’s coursing through him, sitting there in a brightly lit hotel room staring into Rae’s eyes, it’s almost the worst he’s ever experienced. He nods.

He holds it together through the footage of the mug falling. Rae and Sunny share a look afterwards, and Sunny picks up the laptop and switches it over to an audio track. His eyes blur a little as he watches the green bars dance to the sound of his voice as he warns it to stay away from his daughter. He might be embarrassed if circumstances were different, if he hadn’t just seen the mug move on its own.

His voice on the recording trails off, “even being sodding dead won’t help you…” There’s a long pause, static silence crackling. The green bars fall to the bottom of the line. And then…

It’s a low, deep, menacing chuckle. It’s slow, drawn out, cold. A man’s voice, ominously mocking his weak threat. The voice hums in amusement.

He closes his eyes at the burning cold frisson of terror that shoots down his spine like lightning. It’s sharp and searing, the fear. His throat is tight and choking. He can’t catch his breath.

Rae grabs his hand. He opens his eyes, locks onto her concerned face, her warm brown eyes. She nods, just barely. He closes his eyes again. She squeezes his hand. On the recording, he hears himself call after Rae. He must have missed the mug breaking.

He can feel the couch shifting as the director lady leans forward and turns the recording off. “Do you want to hear it again?” She asks.

“Margot!” Rae hisses.

Finn opens his eyes again, moves his other hand to clutch onto Rae’s. He looks up at Sunny. “How… could this be doctored? Faked somehow?”

Sunny studies him for a minute, his frown barely visible beneath his beard. “No, mate. I put those cameras in myself yesterday, and you and Rae were the only two in the house last night until I came and pulled them down. It’s legit.”

Finn nods sullenly, his spine still tight. He can’t stop hearing that sound replaying in his head. Rae glances over at him, sympathy painted all over her face. “There’s one more bit. Do you think… do you want to see it?”

He just looks at her, lets his eyes run over the dark circles under her eyes, the pale freckles that pepper her neck. He still can’t breathe right; the warmth of her beneath his grip is the only thing that’s keeping him from floating away. He nods again.

This bit is the worst of all, because it’s in Emmy’s room. Last night’s fear hits him again like a punch, folds over on itself in his stomach until it’s a rock inside him, radiating death. The orange blob sidles onto the screen, forms itself into the shape of a man. A man in his daughter’s room. Oh God, Emmy.

He lets go of Rae when the figure disappears, leans forward to put his head in his hands. His heart is pounding, his whole body trembling. He rises abruptly, stalks to the farthest part of the room. He feels like he’s made of lead, and at the same time like there’s nothing tethering him to the world. His knees feel spongy, like they might give out, so he collapses into the nearest empty chair.

Oh God, Emmy.

He hangs his head over his knees, closes his eyes, tries to get a hold of himself. He works to even his breathing, slow the frantic pounding of his heart, hold back the tears that are burning behind his eyelids. He can feel the pressure of eyes on him, of everyone looking at him as he works to keep himself together.

It feels like a long time before he can look up again. “What do we do now?”

Rae stands up and walks over next to him, puts a hand on his shoulder. Together they look toward Margot. Margot stands too, hugs her arms to herself, hands over elbows. She’s wearing a striped cardigan that makes her look even thinner than she is, fragile like a bird.

“I don’t know.” Her black bob swings as she shakes her head.

“What do you mean, you don’t know?” Rae challenges. Finn can hear as her fear turns into anger.

“I don’t know, Rachel!” Margot yells back. “How would anybody know? It’s not like any of us actually expected this to be real! This is supposed to be a show about proving that all of this shit is just in people’s heads, about helping them feel better. You’re the one with the book, with the degrees! You’re the one who is supposed to know about this stuff! What do we do?”

Rae’s shaking again, her whole body vibrating with her pent-up emotion. In the midst of his terror, of his guilt and fear, he has an abrupt flash of recollection. She used to get like this before, in Uni. They’d have a squabble and she’d get out of control, shrieking and weeping, her body shaking in the force of her emotion. He’d never felt more helpless.

Until now.

He stands, puts a hand on Rae’s arm and guides her to sit in his chair. He puts a hand on each of her shoulders, standing above her. After a moment, she reaches up to put her hand over his.

“Margot,” she starts, slow and measured. “He’s got a kid in that house. None of us… it’s hard to… Something real is happening there, something bad, something scary.”

“We have to go back.” Margot is quiet, careful. “This isn’t what we planned for, but it can be better.”

He has no words, there’s nothing to be said. Rae’s jaw is hanging open again when he glances down. There’s a long silence as Rae and Margot stare each other down. Everyone is the room watches.

“I… I might know a way to help.” Says a small voice. Finn traces it to the crying girl. “My, my aunt, she’s… She knows about this kind of stuff.”

“What do you mean?” Rae asks, clutching tighter at his hand. Or maybe he’s clutching tighter, it’s hard to say.

“She’s… superstitious.” The girl says, pushing back her glasses. “She said she could do a blessing on the house. It would make… things… not want to be there.”

There’s a long silence, until finally Rae says, “How soon can she come?”

Something within him snaps, like a bone that had been keeping him upright. His legs wont support him suddenly and he’s sitting in a heap on the floor. He doesn’t have to do this alone. They’re going to help. Emmy is going to be okay.

Sunny and Randy help him to his feet and deposit him on the couch. He still feels unsteady, like the ground is wobbly beneath him. Rae brings him a glass of water and he drinks it in three long swallows. The girl gets back on her phone; Randy pulls her under his arm. Margot pulls a tablet from a bag beside the couch and begins frantically typing on it.

“She can come in an hour.” The girl turns back toward the room, takes a couple of wobbly steps towards Finn. Rae perches on the arm of the couch. He leans into her warmth.

“Good.” Rae is flat, grim. “Thank you, Tabitha.” She turns her torso towards him, touches the side of his head. Her fingers delve under his hair to his scalp, almost a caress. He looks up and meets her wide eyes. “Don’t go home yet, Finn. And don’t take Emmy back to that house.”

—

They’re sitting on a bench in the back garden, neither of them in a hurry to go back into the house. The tech guys are inside affixing things and adding new monitoring equipment. The lights are all on and pouring from the windows, even though the yard is full of honey light with the sun just setting behind them.

Margot had spent the afternoon making frantic calls while typing manically on her tablet. A lawyer Rae’d never seen before had shown up in the hotel suite around three, handing out new liability forms and updated contracts. Sunny had been upgraded to an on-camera personality, bringing some of his usual cheer back to the surface, at least when he doesn’t think anyone is looking. Margot had scrounged up a medium from a neighboring town, who’d arrived half an hour ago immediately launched into a deep conversation with the director about how they’d make contact with the spirits in the house. She’ ha the biggest stack of papers of them all; she’d only shaken out her graying fringe and signed without reading anything, but not before she’d said some kind of prayer, eyes closed and palms raised for a solid five minutes.

Within the first hour, it’d become clear that Rae was no longer in charge of this thing in any capacity. The tone is shifting, and Rae isn’t going to be the star of the show anymore- the ghosts are. It’s also clear that the ghosts merit a bigger budget. She’s not sure how she feels about this development, how she feels about anything at all. The whole world is different today.

Finn’s barely said a word all afternoon. She knows because she’s hovered near him, just waiting for him to collapse again. It’s another layer of fear, being scared that he won’t be able to hold up against what’s happening. She thinks it makes her stronger, supporting him. She didn’t know that could happen, that they could share a reserve of strength between them. When he’s got less, she’s got more.

She glances over at him beside her. His hair is sticking up from where he’s raked his hands through it. His cuticles are bitten bloody, and it’s a surprise that he doesn’t have a finger between his teeth. He’s watching the shapes moving through the windows, so she turns to do the same. They’re quiet, but she can feel the tension building in the air as the sun sinks beneath the horizon.

“Do you remember the day we met?” Finn asks suddenly.

Rae chuckles, a single huff of air. “Of course. You were writing your name in all your books.”

“They told us to do that!” He turns towards her, hands raised, the first smile of the day on his lips. “Are you ever going to let my live that down?”

“Probably not.”

“I still can’t believe that it was six weeks before anybody noticed you were rooming on the boy’s floor.” He shakes his head, still smiling. “Raymond.”

She laughs for real this time and rolls her shoulders, keeping her eyes on the back door. “Well, I wasn’t about to say anything. The girls floor was all drama. Plus, I had this super fit roommate that I totally fancied. I was trying to get in there, you know?”

Even though she’s not looking at him, she knows the expression that’ll be on his face just by the warmth of his voice as he says, “I’d say it worked well enough.”

“They should have just let us stay together, for all the time we spent in each other’s rooms that year. Would have been easier. Less complaints from the roommates.”

“I dunno. I might not have asked you out if you hadn’t left.” He teases, and it’s almost like his voice is wrapping around her like a blanket, staving off the rapidly increasing chill.

“Yeah, you didn’t even make it eight hours, did you?” She smiles at the memory, him shuffling his feet, red-faced, when she opened her new door.

“It was six, I think.” Finn lifts his head towards the sky before tilting it towards her. “I skipped Philosophy to go to your room. God, that was a shit class.”

Rae chuckles. Finn turns to watch the house again. The sky deepens into darkness. Rae shivers at the cold.

“What happened to us, Rae?” He asks finally, eyes fixed on the back door. “How’d we go from that to hating each other?”

She doesn’t turn towards him, though she wants to. People, especially men, often have an easier time talking when they’re side by side, rather than face to face. It’s a tactic she’s made use of many times since University. She watches the distinct shape of Randy pause in the kitchen and raise his hands to rest on the top of his head. “I don’t hate you.”

He doesn’t reply. Doesn’t bite at his cuticles either, but she doesn’t know what that means. “Finn?”  
She tries again, nudging his motionless form with her elbow. “I don’t hate you. I never hated you.”

When he turns his face towards her, he looks so much older. His eyes are deep and hollowed, fathomless. She wants to touch him, make that sad look go away, but she holds back.

“I…” She starts to explain, to finally tell him everything that happened all those years ago, sitting on a bench in his back garden almost a decade later. “There’s so much I never told you.”

He takes her hand and she follows his gaze down to their shoes. “Tell me now.”

She nods, takes a deep breath into her lungs, gathering both the air and the courage. But the back door opens and the unmistakable shape of Margot fills the doorway.

“It’s time for hair and makeup.” She says, and all the dread swoops back down to land heavily in Rae’s stomach. “It’s getting dark.”

“Alright.” Rae calls back. When she turns her head, Finn is looking at her. He’s just looking, but something about it feels different, more. She feels the swirling in her stomach like she’s eighteen again. It’s just the memories, she tells herself. Just thinking about all that ancient history.

He inhales slowly, and it’s like he’s drawing his breath straight from her lungs. He stands, but she stays sitting for a moment, a bit dizzy all of a sudden. He looks towards the house; the shapes inside are fewer now.

“I can’t believe we’re doing this again.” He says.

She doesn’t reply.


	5. Chapter 5

Rae yawns, sinking further into the couch and into his side. She’s been more hands off since the cameras have been on. He’s surprised by how much it bothers him that she stands further away, that she doesn’t reach for him like she has been. It scares him how easily he’s fallen back in, how easy it was to go from nothing at all with her to… whatever this is. But almost everything is frightening at the moment, so it’s not something he’s really bothered about.

It’s been nearly three hours and nothing has happened. The blessing apparently worked, to Finn’s relief and Margot’s chagrin. Well, he supposes she’s chagrinned, he hasn’t seen her to check since lights out. Fatigue has started to press them all further into their seats, chasing away the rigid watchfulness from the beginning of the night. Finn shifts into the cushions, moving so that her shoulder is lined up with his. Her hair spills over onto his t-shirt and his tired mind wonders if it’s still as soft as he remembers. He yawns.

Across the room, the medium suddenly sits up straight in her chair, perching near the edge. Her name is Rose, and she’s absolutely nothing like he’d expected. He’s not sure what that is exactly, besides someone vaguely gypsy-like, but Rose looks like she spends her afternoons baking biscuits for her church group. She’s wearing a twinset and pearls, for fucks sake. He’s dubious about her abilities, so it’s probably better that there’s no ghost anymore.

No probably about it. It’s so much better. He sets his hand on the sofa and it brushes Rae’s jeans.

“Do you hear that?” Rose asks.

They all turn to look at her, Sunny hunching forward over his knees and cocking his head to better listen. Rae and Finn share a look, then glance furtively around the room, senses straining to pick up any sound nearby. He hears Rae breathing beside him, the swish of her pants as she uncrosses her legs, the clock in the hallway ticking, crickets on the front porch. All ordinary things.

“Hear what?” Rae asks, sitting up straighter. His hand falls between them until he lifts it to bite at his cuticles. Rose shushes her, and all of them focus on the silence once more. After a minute, Rose shakes her head, leaning back in her chair.

The clock in the hall starts to chime and he relaxes a bit at the familiar and comforting sound. He’d inherited Nan’s old Westminster clock when they moved back to Stamford, and even after all these months, it still reminds him of nights spent in Nan’s guest room, the clock marking the hours until he’d be returned to his Dad.

Rose sits up again, frowning, around the eighth chime.

“It’s just the clock,” he tells her. “It’s got a wonky chime. It’ll do it again in a minute. Listen.”

The crooked chime peels on twelve, and he gives the medium a reassuring smile. Her brows stay furrowed, and he follows suit when the last note doesn’t fade, but lingers. The low, solemn G stretches into the quiet of the room, way longer than it’s done before, way longer than it should. A shiver shoots down his spine, and when he turns to look at Rae, her eyes are wide and wary.

Finn stands, rubbing his hands on the front of his jeans over his thighs. He wants to pause, to gather his courage, but everyone is watching him, so he goes straight into the hall and picks up the small mantle clock. He squints into the clock face stupidly, turns it over and frowns at the back. He’s got no idea how to open it, how to fix it. He winds the little knob on the back, but when he turns it back over, the hands are frozen and unmoving. The music stops.

He glances up, and everyone is standing in the doorway to the front room, watching him. He shrugs at them, setting the clock back down on the bureau.

“Broken.” He explains, and Rose shakes her head.

That’s when it happens.

There’s a rushing sound, like blood pulsing in his ears or a sudden gush of wind, and then a sudden bang and a loud clatter reverberates from the kitchen, rattling even the photos on the wall in the hallway. Rae screams, short and sharp. He crosses the space between them without being aware of it, puts an arm over her shoulders. The four of them stare into the black spot that is the kitchen, shocked and terrified. They stay frozen in the hall for a long minute, all of them waiting to see if anymore noises will follow.

Rae looks around at everyone, scowls, and then strides forward into the darkness of the other room. Finn starts to call out, tell her not to go, tell her to stay here, safe in his arms, but the words die on his lips. She’s a big girl, the star of this show, and he’s never been able to tell her what to do. So he follows.

The cabinet doors are all flung wide open, their dark interiors like gaping maws along the walls of the kitchen. He swallows heavily, turns his face away, but then he sees that the chairs have all been blown away from the table, pushed back and resting on their backs on the floor. He shivers again, and it’s then that he notices that it’s freezing in the kitchen. His breath mists in front of his face, a specter hanging in the air before him.

“Shit.” Sunny says, close behind him. Finn doesn’t turn, just nods as he gapes, dumbfounded. Rae bravely moves over to the cabinets and swings one of the doors on its hinges, testing it’s mobility.

With a sudden, single movement, all the cabinet doors slam shut. Rae makes a strangled shriek as the wood is wrenched from her hand, jumping back into the center of the kitchen and crossing her arms over her chest protectively. Finn tries to go to her, but he can’t get his feet to move.

“It doesn’t like that we’re here.” Rose says, and her voice is different, deeper, slower. He closes his eyes, but he can sense her walking around to stand in the center of the room, near Rae. “It’s angry about what happened here this afternoon.”

“How do you know this?” Sunny asks. “Is the spirit talking to you?”

They’re standing in a rough cluster, away from the dark and shadowy corners of the room. Finn steps in until he’s close enough to see the way Rose’s eyes are squeezed shut and her face contorted. Sunny’s beard is moving, but Finn can’t see well enough to make out why. Rae is solemn, still, arms closed tightly over herself.

“No, not talking, really. It’s mostly just feelings.” Rose says, and then she turns her face towards a dark corner, eyes still closed and features pinched. “I don’t think it’s all the way here yet.”

“Not all the way here?” Rae asks, shaking her head and scoffing. Her laughter has a touch of the hysterical about it. “Flinging open the bloody cupboards and not all the way here?”

Rose opens her eyes and looks at Rae for a long moment. “I think we should try and contact it. Find out what it’s doing here, send it back where it came from.”

“What does that mean?” Finn asks. “Contact it? How do you contact a ghost besides just talking into the air?”

“We form a circle.” Rose says decisively, moving across the kitchen and bending to right the chairs. “And we light candles.”

“A séance? You want to have a bloody séance in my kitchen?” Finn sneers, and Rose turns a blank face towards him. She doesn’t look quite so grandmotherly anymore, not when she’s holding her face empty and stark like that.

“Some people call it that.” Rose says condescendingly. Finn shoots a glance at Rae, but she’s bending over and peering at the cabinets, arms tight against her and away from them. “But I call it a circle. Just a circle. Sunny, would you be so kind as to get my bag?”

Sunny moves his feet back and forth, like he can’t quite decide if he should go. Rae grunts. “I’ll go with you.”

Finn watches them go. Rose moves towards him, walks a slow circle around him, eyes closed. Finn rubs at his arms, shoulders hunched.

“You’ve spoken to it.” Rose says decisively. He shakes his head, no no no. “You’re the center, it really doesn’t like you. What did you say?” She stops in front of him, looks at him for a long time and then gasps. Finn flinches. “The girl. It has something to do with the girl.”

“No.” He says, coldly. “We’re not bringing her into this.”

Rose watches him. He can’t tell what she’s thinking, what ‘it’ is saying to her, but he’s sure it’s not good. There’s something about her, about this whole thing that makes his skin crawl. Another frisson of fear tingles through him. When Rae and Sunny come back into the room, it’s a relief.  Rae touches his back when she gets to him, and they share a look, share some of the fear and tension between them.

“Come, sit.” Rose says, and they turn to see that she’s placed four candles in the center of his kitchen table. It makes him uneasy, the idea of doing this. The idea of Rose doing this. If it’s this bad already, how much worse will it be when the ghost is all the way here?

Rae touches his hand as she walks beside him, just once, briefly. He wants to grab on, to tug her from the room and out the door. The muscles in his shoulders are bunching and he’s deeply uncertain, but he sits down at the table beside Rae. Sunny is already on his right, rubbing his hand over his beard in slow, tight strokes. Rose bends over the table, muttering under her breath as she lights the candles. Finn’s leg is bouncing under the table.

Finally, she sits, looking into each face. The candlelight brightens the kitchen some, but the dancing shadows from the candlelight seem grotesque and ominous. His breath is coming unevenly, white puffs of air distorting the air even further.

“Join hands.” Rose says. Finn looks down at his hand in Sunny’s first, then in Rae’s. She squeezes his fingers and he glances up to her worried eyes. “We’re going to call the spirit forth to speak to us. I’ll charge it to speak and tell us what it wants. And then I will charge it to leave.” She looks at each of them, a stern grandmother. “Whatever happens, you must not break the circle.”

“What might happen?” Sunny asks, and Finn thinks there’s excitement in his voice. He lowers his head, stares at the tabletop.

“It could get… intense.” Rose intones. Rae mutters “Jesus” under her breath. “It will likely be frightening. But you must not break the circle. You must not break the circle.” There’s a long pause. Halfway through, the ticking from the hall clock starts up again. “Prepare yourselves. It’s time to begin.”

It’s probably just his imagination, but the flickering shadows seem to draw closer to Rose’s face, painting the folds of her skin in sharp relief. As she begins chanting, the rest of the world seems to fall away, causing a nauseating sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach. He has a swirling sensation, like the table is spinning. No, like the table is the only thing in the world not spinning. The rushing sound fills his ears again.

Rose’s voice gets deeper and more authoritative, rhythmic and fast. The whooshing increases. Finn grips harder onto Rae and Sunny’s hands’ he has the strange sensation that if he lets go, he’ll go flying off into nothingness. His stomach churns. The rushing in his ears gets louder and he starts to think it’s his blood racing faster and faster through his heart, which is starting to clench and tighten with the manic pace of its beating. He clenches the fingers in his hands. His face feels hot, wind burned, chapped. The wind is all he can hear.

And then it stops. And there’s nothing.

No noise, no air, no light. It’s just their table in the darkness.

An enormous empty blackness all around them. It’s almost pulsing with emptiness. There’s nothing outside of their table.

Rae makes a strangled, choking scream, and her hand starts to pull away from his. He scrambles to keep a hold of her, but her fingers are slipping out of his grasp in slow motion, millimeter by millimeter.

“Don’t break the circle!” Rose cries, and Rae’s hand tightens in his. He’d exhale in relief, but he’s not sure if he’s breathing anymore. He’s not sure there’s air in this space, wherever it is. His chest is heaving, though, so maybe it’s just the sound that’s missing.

“What is this, Rose?” Rae asks, voice tight and fearful. “Where are we?”

“We’re in the circle.” Rose says, and Finn wants to cry out. What is this? What is the world now? “I’m going to call it.”

“Wait!” He finds his voice. This all feels so wrong. “I don’t think we should do this. I don’t think this is a good idea.”

“It’s too late.” Rose says, nearly on top of him. A new kind of hollowness surrounds them, presses against them. “It’s here.”

And a deep, menacing laugh echoes through the non-air. It’s more than a shiver of fear this time, it’s a tidal wave of terror that’s threatening to drown him. It’s the voice from the recording.

“Yes, it’s much too late.” It says, laughing again. His hands are sweating, though every other part of him is icy cold. He wants desperately to wipe his hands on his jeans. “It’s too late for all of you. Too late for the little one.”

He’s coughing, choking, seizing up, but there’s nothing anyone can do. Rae clenches his hand tightly enough that it feels like she might break his bones, and when he glances over at her, wrenches his eyes away from the nothing, she looks sick with horror herself. He focuses on her, on the glimmer of the candlelight in her eyes, on the curve of her perfectly pink lip.

“I charge you, spirit, come forth!” Rose cries out. The voice laughs more, louder until it’s booming through his chest and rattling his ribs. “I’m in charge here, you have no power on this circle! Come forth, name yourself!”

The laughter gets louder, louder and louder until it’s the only thing that exists. Just that horrible, maniacal chuckling. Finn thinks he’s going to throw up. And then it stops.

There’s a resonant, thundering silence until finally it says, “I am He.”

He can hear Rae panting beside him, see beads of sweat trickling down the sides of Rose’s forehead. Sunny is quivering.

“What do you want?” Rose commands.

The voice is amused when it replies, and the nothing presses harder against his back. “I want her.”

“No!” Finn yells without thinking, without any control over what he’s saying. “You cannot touch her! She is mine! I’ll kill you!”

The laughter booms again, a sickening vice gripping his insides. There’s a viscous sludge of vomit threatening to escape him at any moment if he opens his mouth again. He’s sweating now too, a fever sweat as his body fights off the presence.

“Finn.” Rae hisses in warning. He looks at her and she jerks her head to their hands. He’s trying to pull away. He hadn’t known he was doing that.

“You cannot have the girl. The world of the living is not for you. You will go.” Rose sneers, but she’s getting pale. Splotches of red mottle her cheeks.

The laughter swirls around them, and the nothing swirls with it. Finn’s head spins.

“I’ll have her yet.” The voice scoffs. “The girl is marked. She’s mine. She belongs to this place as I belong to this place now. You cannot stop me. I am He. I am more.”

“NO!” he screams, lurching up. The others cry wordlessly around him, but he doesn’t notice. “  
You stay away from my daughter! You stay away from my child! You can’t have her!!!!!”

The swirling starts again, faster. Worse this time, so much worse.

“No, Finn!” Rae calls.

“You musn’t break the circle!” Rose screams.

But it’s too late. The darkness spins, faster and faster. The laughter swirls with the wind, with the nothing, with the black.

And then there is no more.

—

It’s a snap, when it happens. Her teeth rattle with the force of it, the whole world seems to shimmer with vibration. There’s none of the tunneling feeling of going into the circle, none of the pressure they’d endured when they’d first joined hands. There’s just the horrible, sickening nothing. Until there isn’t.

She cries out as the world thunders back into focus, then again when she sees Finn splayed out on the kitchen floor.  A pool of blood spreads slowly beneath his head. She scrambles out of her chair and onto the floor beside him, fighting back a wave of vertigo in the movement. She picks up his head, peers into his face, commands him to wake up.

His eyes are rolled back in his head when she lifts his eyelid, leaving a trail of blood on his skin from her thumb. She puts his head on her lap and looks down at her hands, stunned. They’re red with his blood. Her jeans are red too, slowly leaking out underneath where his head rests. Red. Red like before. Red.

Her head spins. Is she crying? She can’t really tell. Should she be? It’s so hard to tell how she should be anymore. What are the rules when the world no longer follows the rules?

Finn groans, and she tries to focus her eyes on his face. He’s opening his eyes, moaning and touching the back of his head.

“Fuck.” He says, sitting up. She’s reluctant to let him go, to remove her hands from cradling his face. He pulls his hand back and frowns at the blood, grimaces before looking at her. “What happened?”

“What happened?” She repeats, voice high and almost recognizable. “What happened is you broke the fucking circle.”

Sunny appears above them and hands Finn a towel, which Finn presses to the back of his head. “Thanks, mate. I must have fallen and hit my head. Did the séance work?” His eyes seek out Rose in the flickering darkness. “Did you get rid of it?”

“You don’t remember?” She asks sharply, turning her head to peer at him like she’s some kind of great bird of prey.

“Not really.”

Rae helps Finn to stand up, then goes to the sink and begins scrubbing furiously at her hands. It doesn’t want to go, the red always wants to stick. She adds more soap and scrubs at her hands with the vegetable brush sitting beside the sink. She has to get rid of the blood. Finn’s blood.

She spins around to the room again, and Finn’s back at the kitchen table, elbow on the table so that he can hold the cloth to his head. She rummages around in the drawers near the sink until she finds a clean one, and then goes to sit beside him. He gives her a soft smile, but Rae turns her gaze to Rose.

“What happened? What in the bloody hell was all that?” Rae demands, and Sunny moves to stand near her shoulder, so that the three of them are facing down the elderly woman as a united front.

“You shouldn’t have broken the circle.” Rose says. She’s breathing heavy, and Rae would almost feel bad for her if it wasn’t for the complete fucking lunacy that just happened to them. “It’s going to get much worse, I fear. We’re going to have to call in more people to banish it now.”

“Banish? What exactly are we dealing with?” Sunny asks. He’s leaning forward, his chest is in the air above where she’s sitting.

Rose shakes her head. “I can’t say. I need to consult some people, some reference books. But it’s not good. We’ve let it out now.”

“How did we let it out?” Finn sounds bewildered. He pulls the towel away, and he’s stopped bleeding. Rae bends over and gently brushes the back of his head to be sure. He grabs her fingers, entwines them with his, then moves them down to rest together on his thigh. He smiles at Rae, reassures, “I’m alright.”

“We called it to speak to us, pulled it further into the here and now. And then it provoked you into unleashing it.” It should sound ridiculous, but the way that laugh had ripped down her back is still fresh in Rae’s mind. Her back still aches with it. She rubs a hand over the base of her neck and winces at the fresh stinging.

“What is it?” Finn frowns at her.

She carefully runs her finger over the sore spot, finds the skin raised and puffy. She shakes her head at him and he stands to pull down the collar of her sweater and look. His sharp inhale of air is loud in the quiet kitchen.

“Rae… there’s scratches all down your neck.” He touches one and she winces again. “How far does this go? Stand up.”

She rises from her chair, and Rose moves to watch as Finn lifts her hem and carefully pulls the fabric up her back. It must be bad, because there’s utter silence from behind her. She feels like there’s a streak of fire down her entire back.

“We should leave for the night, I think.” Rose murmurs, and Finn gently lowers her shirt. “It’s not safe. We’ll return tomorrow with help. And a plan.”

“Yes, let’s go.” Sunny says, shivering and frowning. “You should put some Neosporin on that, Rachel. Looks bad.”

Finn’s biting his finger again, and for a minute she wants nothing more than to collapse into his arms, to weep and cry and rail against his strength. But he’s pale, with rusty stains on the collar of his shirt. She’s not sure he’s got any strength to lend.

As Rose blows out the candles, Sunny goes into the front room to get the radio so he can talk to the team outside. Finn lets out a long, slow, heavy exhale. Rae nods, because she knows exactly what he means by it.

“Randy’s going to the power box. The lights will be up in a couple of seconds.” Sunny tells them, clapping Finn on the shoulder. They can hear the front door opening, see the beam of a flashlight going down the hall.

The lights flicker on, and the relief from them all is palpable. Even Rose seems to sag against the kitchen counter.

“Everyone okay?” Randy asks as he turns into the doorway. Rae nods at him and smiles, then takes two steps closer to Finn, wanting some of his warmth at the very least. He moves his arms like he’s going to hug her.

And then the lights tremble and go out again. Rose moans slightly.

The laughter starts again, slinking through the room like vapor, sickly sweet and cloying. It gets thicker, louder and louder and louder. Randy’s flashlight goes out and he yells, a girlish shriek of fear. Rae moves into Finn’s arms and closes her eyes, pressing her face against his chest. Soon the laughter is booming, rattling the glass in the window and the glasses in the dish drainer. The cabinet doors shake against their frames.

The laughter shoves at them, a wave of sound and pressure. It’s almost like an earthquake… the ground feels unsteady, the world wobbling around them. A picture frame falls in the hall, and the sound of breaking glass is nearly lost in the roar of the laughter.

She thinks she’s definitely crying now. Finn’s arms are tight around her. The scratches down her back sting.

The lights flick back on, and it’s like nothing happened. Nothing is moving, nothing is different. It’s just the five of them in a frozen tableau of fear. Rose’s knees start to give out and she catches herself against the counter with a clatter. Sunny goes to help her.

“Well that was fucking terrifying.” Randy says. Sweat is dripping down his face, though it’s freezing in the room. “Let’s get the fuck out of here.”

He opens the back door for Rose, whose wobbly steps are supported by Sunny, and follows them out. He leaves the door wide open.

She can feel Finn’s heavy swallow, the way his chest moves as he nods. She moves back a little so she can look at him. He doesn’t take his hands off her back and she’s grateful. He just stares for a moment, then shakes his head sadly, defeated and weary.

“C’mon.” She says, sliding her hand down his arm to take his. She feels shivery and sick. Finn’s hand trembles in hers.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bonus: Here's a link to the playlist that gave me the shivers while writing this. http://how-ardently.tumblr.com/post/132754075681/erins-ghastly-truth-playlist


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Thank you glue not voodoo! Your comment got me back on track!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you glue not voodoo! Your comment got me back on track!

Less than six hours later, he finds himself outside her door. It’s well past dawn, but the it’s so dark and gray that it still feels like the fragile hour just before the sun rises. Everything feels heavy, like there’s nothing in the world that doesn’t want to press him down.

He hates this kind of weather, the frozen stillness where the world is waiting on a knife’s edge for the snow to come, for something to change. It’s the kind of cold that creeps and slinks under windowsills and through crevasses in the doorframe. He can feel it hovering around the baseboards of the endless hotel hallways, each door identical to all the ones before. Walking down the hall gives him the strange sensation that the ground is moving beneath him, like he’s lurching through time just a little out of sync.

He hasn’t really been sleeping, not much anyway. But it’s hard to tell himself it’s the lack of sleep that’s making things feel so strange and surreal. Everything he knew before is different now, so who’s to say that time isn’t bending around him, that the cold doesn’t ooze like a fog? He’d let a ghost loose in his kitchen a few hours ago; his definition of strange isn’t so concrete anymore.

The door opens after the first knock, like she’s waiting right there on the other side for him. This too makes sense.

“I couldn’t sleep.” He says simply, and she holds onto the doorknob with one hand and gestures him into the room. He steps in and Rae glances once down the empty hallway before she shuts the door.

There’s so much he should say, but the words won’t come. His eyes feel cavernously deep in their sockets, his shoulders low and heavy with fatigue. She doesn’t speak, just watches as he struggles for words. Her eyes feel weighty on him too.

“I’m scared.” It’s not what he means to say really, but it’s what he means. It’s what all of this means.

Rae nods, and before he’s had time to process  it, she’s wrapping him up in her arms. It’s a single movement, almost choreographed- her arms slip around his neck, his slide around her waist to press into her back. It’s instinct; he’d always felt that there was so much of them that he’d never had to think about, that just came to them. When there were no words, there was always this- the support of her limbs when his couldn’t quite hold him up. He thinks that this must be what he came here for, and he clings to her.

For a while, it’s enough.

But somehow, things start to shift. He becomes aware that they’re alone, really alone. They’ve been without other people before since this whole thing started, plenty of times. But it’s different now… the walls are down, the anger and hurt that used to be between them has sunk into the fissures of the world crumbling apart. They’re left alone, just the two of them and the hush of the impending snowfall and the shared warmth of their bodies, the shared warmth of their fear.

His body goes liquid, muscles loosening that he hadn’t consciously been aware of holding taut. He sags against her, turns his head slightly so his cheek rests against her shoulder instead of his forehead. His breath comes thick, like syrup in and out of his lungs. It huffs hot over Rae’s neck. Everything seems to freeze for a moment while he tries to catch his breath, stop the swirling in his head. He finds himself nuzzling his nose over her skin, tentative and halting.

He should wait for her to make the move, let her be the one to choose if this is going over the edge. He’s always been respectful, careful of her boundaries. He should wait until he knows that she wants this. He should, at the very least, wait until he knows that he wants this.

Then his mouth is on her neck, and her skin is warm and sweet beneath his tongue, and there are no more choices to make. She moans.

It’s as if he’s not really in control of his body any more, as if there’s some other, stronger force guiding his lips and hands. He can barely keep track. Suddenly, they’re sweeping across the room together. His lips won’t leave her neck, even as she arches her back and he has to bend over her.

They’re at the bed, and Finn pushes Rae down and hunches over her, capturing her beneath him, gruffly shoving at the neckline of her nightgown until her breasts spill free over the fabric and he can paw at them. Rae scrambles at his shirt, pulling it and his jacket up to bunch at his shoulder blades until she can press her palms against his fevered skin. He wrenches his mouth away, returns to suckling her neck as he pushes his thigh roughly between her legs to grind against her. Rae arches her back, a cry falling from her lips.

 _Slow down,_ the thought flashes through him and is gone in an instant. He feels like he’s starving for her, like he’ll run out of air if he’s not inside of her soon.

She reaches to shove at the waistband of his jeans, whining when his belt prevents the denim from sliding down more than an inch. He levers up to give her access to his belt, taking the chance to peel his jacket off and tug his shirt over his head. She fumbles at the buckle, fingers trembling, and he watches her, distracted by the darkness of her eyes, pupils blown huge. Her skin is flushed, her chest heaving. He makes a noise somewhere between a groan and a growl, lost in the pulsing of his want.

His hands race over whatever parts of her he can reach, gripping and kneading, but it’s not enough. She’s still covered, and the taut fabric prevents him from touching her where he most wants to. He doesn’t want to tease, he just wants to feel her clenching around him, test the slickness of her with his fingers. Rae grinds herself down over his knee, but it’s not enough. Not enough.

He pulls back abruptly and Rae whines, trying to tug him closer. He bats her hands away and swiftly pushes her nightgown up and her knickers aside.  And then, then he’s got a finger inside of her, surrounded by her heat.

“That’s it.” He mutters into her neck. “That’s what you want, isn’t it?”

“Finn.” She growls, and a shiver of unease moves down his spine, pushed away almost instantly by the desire slicking through him.

He groans and watches her arch up off the bed. It’s too much. It’s not enough. _Wait_ , something inside him whispers. He stands up and strips.

Rae cries out at the absence, pleads with him to hurry. He strokes himself roughly while she watches on, eyes glossy and dark. And then he’s flipping her over on the bed, levering her hips up and her chest down. The ivory satin of her nightgown pools over the small of her back, just over the edge of the ugly red scratches. He rubs himself against her, but doesn’t enter her, despite the seeking thrusts of her hips. He runs his fingers over the injured skin, mesmerized by the puffy pink lines and her pale skin in sharp relief.

“Please, please…” She whines, glancing back over her shoulder at him. Her cheeks are flushed, her eyes and hair black, skin so pale. She’s beautiful.

He thrusts into her in one sharp, smooth movement. Rae groans and buries her face in a pillow. Finn shoves her nightgown further up, one hand tight on her hip and one running the lines of the scratches. Rae winces, then moans. He smiles grimly and does it again, harder, timing the thrust of his hips with pull of his fingers.

He can’t quite catch the rhythm, can’t quite find that perfect synchronicity they used to have. He tries slow and slick, fast and hard, but he can’t find the old them in the movement of their bodies. Rae trembles beneath him, tries to twist to watch him, but he pushes her into the mattress with his hand on her back. She sobs in pleasure, and he swears he can feel it from the place his cock is making contact inside of her. He lets his blunt nails rake down her skin, a new line of scratches marking her as his.

Rae screams and comes undone, body jerking and then slackening.

He fucks her harder after that, chasing his own orgasm, concentrating on his own pleasure. He mutters obscenities under his breath, eyes squeezed shut as he drives himself deep into her. He can’t find the pace, can’t get enough. He grits his teeth in frustration; his climax is just out of reach. He slams himself into her, searching. His hips move swiftly, jerkily, until finally, he follows her over the edge with a curse.

He slumps over her, his body heavy and sticky against hers. Rae collapses beneath him, and he wants to move, take his weight off of her, but he’s not in control of himself just yet. Instead, he leans his forehead into her shoulder blade; he can hear her heart pounding even without his ear pressed up against her.  

“I can’t breathe.” She says, sounding far away. He levers himself off of her with a grunt, collapsing on his back beside her. Rae reaches to pull her nightgown back down over herself.

They don’t say anything for a long time afterwards. He listens to footsteps creaking in the room next to them, to the growling of the radiator, to Rae’s familiar, even breathing. He wants his chest to ache, for some part of him to recognize how big it is, this thing that they’ve done, but mostly he just feels tired. Layers and layers of tired. He feels a thousand years old, a thousand years tired.

Rae’s hand brushes his arm. “Where are you staying?”

Her voice crystallizes and shatters the fog that’s clouding his thoughts. He was almost asleep, as close to sleep as he’s gotten in the last few days. He shakes his head, trying to pull himself back. What had she asked? “Oh, uh, my Dad’s.”

She hums in acknowledgment. “What about Emmy? She there too?”

A surge of longing grips him at her name. “She’s at her Mum’s. After that first night, her room, I thought… She can’t go back to that house.”

“No, yeah. That’s good.” He thinks she nods, but he can’t see her to know for sure. He really ought to turn over. Her fingers glide over his forearm, curl around his wrist. “Finn…”

He rolls then, lies on his side so he can see her face when he demands, “Tell me what you were going to say earlier.”

“What?”

“This afternoon, in the garden. Or yesterday, I guess? It’s hard to tell. It seems like it was years ago.” He tries to pull the memory, tries to picture the way the sun had reflected in her hair, the smell of the damp ground in his nostrils. But it’s hazy, bleached out.

“Oh.” Rae says, rubbing her face into her pillow.

He watches her for a while. He feels wary, like he’s got no way to anticipate what she’ll do and he has to try to read it in her features. But she’s blank, completely blank for a long moment, until her face wrinkles and she looks down.

“I don’t remember-“

“No.” He cuts her off. A deep frustration has settled into his bones, making him sharp. There’s so little that he’s got any control over right now, he can’t stand the idea of letting her tiptoe around him. “You remember. ‘So much you never told me.’”

“Yeah.” She’s quiet, searching.

“So, what happened with us?” He prods again. He knows she’s trying to find it, that all this horror has pushed who they used to be so much further away, but he needs this to not be such a great fucking mystery anymore. Something has to not be a mystery.

“I was failing school.” She says softly, looking over at him with damp eyes. “When it started to go bad with us. I was failing, and, well… I never told you, but when I was in college, I used to hurt myself. Hate myself. The scars on my legs… It wasn’t an accident like I said. I did those.”

The air in the room gets a little bit thinner. Finn’s head starts to swim with the effort of recreating all the old memories in this new light. He wants to touch her, to feel her solid underneath his hands, this new Rae who is somehow changing the old Rae.

“I got better in college, went to therapy and stuff. When we met, it really wasn’t a problem. I was better. But then… I don’t know if it was doing bad in school that started the depression, or the depression that made me so shit at school, but,” she shakes her head sharply. “It doesn’t matter. I felt like I was worthless, like I was nothing. Being smart was the one thing about me that I could hang on to, the one thing that was really good about me, and when I stopped being smart…” Rae shrugs. “I hated myself, and I couldn’t see how it was possible that you didn’t. I started thinking you were lying when you said it, that you were laughing behind my back about how stupid I was.”

“Jesus, Rae.” Finn winces, reaching to press his palm flat over her back, careful of the scratches. A part of him rearches for what he can say, but most of him is just flattened beneath all these secrets.

Rae wipes a hand over her face, smiles grimly. “It was crazy, I know. But I’m crazy, I’ve always been crazy.” She laughs, but it’s mirthless and damp, almost a sob. “I just couldn’t see how you could like me, and then Katie was around, and you always smiled at her, and…”

“I loved you.” He says dully. Pain makes a thin web around the inside of his skull and hums like static. “Katie was just a girl. I loved you.”

“I’m sorry.”

It’s all there really is to say, he guesses. It was illness that became a wall between them, growing ever larger until he was pushed out of her life. He wonders if it would have been any different if he’d have known. Would he have been able to help, or would it have just been one more problem that Finn was helpless against?

He wants it to be a release, wants to feel like this bitterness and hurt that he’s been carrying around for all these years is suddenly absolved, like he’s free. He wants to let go of all of it, to touch her skin and kiss her hair and move on. He wants this to be something he can do something about.

It’s hard, though, softening all that resentment into something more pliable, reforming it into a history where it wasn’t just him in agony.  

He reaches for her, across the space in the bed and the expanses of time. She exhales shakily, lets him tug her over onto his torso. He pushes her hair back over her shoulder and she props her chin on his chest. Her cheeks aren’t so flushed anymore and she looks worn out. He brushes his thumb over her lips, across her cheekbone.

“Does it change anything?” Her eyes are glossy again, even as she looks away. He wants to be able to tell her yes, to reassure her that them in this bed changes everything. He can tell it’s important.

“I don’t know.”

She nods and hides her face against his skin. He cups the back of her head.

“Are you scared, Rae? Does any of this scare you?” He asks, surprising himself. Maybe this is the question that will change things.

She looks up at him solemnly, eyes wide and dark. For a minute he thinks she’ll lie, that she’ll put on her professional face and shutter closed any kind of vulnerability. But instead, she whispers, “Yes. Yeah, I’m scared.”

A better man wouldn’t feel so satisfied, wouldn’t feel like her fear is some kind of terrible justice. But he knows who he is, and he’s reassured that he’s not alone in his bone deep terror. Not alone in wearing it in front of her. If they can be open about this, if they can be honest when the whole world is rearranging itself around them into new and horrible possibilities, maybe that’s enough. Maybe it’s enough for them to…

He leans up so he can kiss her, his mouth hard against her. It’s not comfort, not a promise. It’s refusal to think about what tomorrow has in store. Her kiss is equally as blunt.

She settles back against him, cheek over his pectoral. She reaches for his hand, twines her fingers in his, shifting back and forth. He supposes he owes her this, owes her a little tenderness. He wraps his arm around her back, presses a kiss into her hair. Rae sighs.

“What on earth?” She pulls his hand closer to her face, her nose curling in disgust. “Your fingernails are black, Finn! What the hell?”

Rae sits up, glancing rapidly around her at the white sheets, now smeared with streaks of black. Finn holds his hand up in front of his face, head swimming as he tries to make sense of the dark crusts under his nails, the darkened indents of his fingerprints. He strains to place it, to drag some kind of recollection from his muddled brain.

“Mud.” He says, a helpful flash of memory coming from out of somewhere- him on his knees, the cold radiating through his jeans and skin and muscle. “It’s mud.” He laughs.

“Why are you muddy?”

“I was gardening.”

“Gardening?” She glances over at the clock. “We were filming until three. You’ve been gardening since then?”

He sits up too, frowning at her. “Yes, Rae. I’ve been having some trouble sleeping, and I like gardening now. It’s soothing. I’m not some big-shot celebrity; I’m just an ordinary kind of guy who plants things.”

“Don’t.” She warns, pointing a finger at him. “You don’t get to do that anymore. I’m here, in your life, right in the middle of your problems. Don’t pretend like I’m some other species from you so you don’t have to see me. Don’t show up in my room and fuck me and then act like I’m someone else, like you don’t know me. Like I’m nothing to you.”

She’s got tears in her eyes by the time she’s done, and shame burns in his stomach. “You’re right. I’m sorry.” He pulls on her arm until she lets him hug her. “I’m sorry. It’s just… it’s all so much.”

“I know.” She nods against him, and he realizes that she does know. As hard and big and fucking terrifying as all this is for him, it’s all those things for her too. He tightens his arms around her, holds her for a long time. Her hand clenches and unclenches around a wad of sheet beside her.

“You’re not nothing to me, Rae.” He says eventually. “You’re pretty much the only thing I’ve got.”

—

She calls everyone in her phone book during the maddening three days before they film again, but says nothing to any of them. She reports on the weather in Stamford (freezing, slushy) and assures that the show is going fine, then turns the conversation and enthusiastically listens to stories of work and boyfriends and travel plans. She tries to write, to make notes at least, but she can’t seem to get her words to work. They scatter every time she puts her fingers on the keyboard, and she doesn’t have the energy to chase after them.

She watches an X-Files marathon on television, comforted by Scully’s cool empiricism in the face of Mulder’s raw belief. “There has to be a logical explanation,” Scully says, and Rae nods enthusiastically at the screen, fingers in her mouth. By the fourth episode, she’s bitten all her nails down to sickly stubs and she cries in frustration at her inability to scratch the gnawing itch of her wounded back. She stays in the hotel robe like it’s a security blanket.

Finn doesn’t call or show up again. Every time she picks up the phone to call him, she rings Chloe instead.

Margot keeps them in the loop about what’s happening with the show. _Rose is doing research, we’ll let you know what she finds. Nothing conclusive yet, we’ll keep you posted. Rose is calling some people, we don’t know who is going to help just now. Rose knows another psychic in Middlebury, we’re going down there._ Rose, Rose, Rose. Rae seethes with bitter jealousy. It gnaws at her stomach and tightens the muscles in her neck. She harbors a deep resentment of Rose, feeding it with imagined camera shots and likely interviews until it becomes loathing. It’s RAE’s show, not Rose’s.

Still Finn doesn’t call.

She gave him too much, that night in her bed. She can hardly stand to think about the ease with which she’d handed over all her secrets, given up so much of her head and history and heart. She’d just thrown all her power, all her control, right at his feet for him to stomp on. Or ignore, as the case was.

So she’s worked herself up to a mighty strop by the time she goes back into the house on Tuesday night. She’s coiffed and wardrobed and made-up according to the stylists wishes, and it makes her feel a little better to have that to disappear behind.

There’s a glut of people in the front room, seven instead of the original two. Plus the makeup girl blotting and adjusting, Randy angling the camera, and Margot talking on her phone. Still, her eyes go directly to Finn.

He’s got his back to her, hunched over himself as he sits on the lounge, knee bouncing frenetically. He looks up as soon as she enters the room, a long look from head to toe. There’s something hard about him, something cold. A shiver goes through her, clenching her stomach. He nods, but doesn’t get up to greet her. She turns away.

“We don’t know what to expect tonight, guys.” Margot announces, tapping her tablet off. “We got some spectacular footage last time, and we’re hoping for some more like that.” Rae looks at the floor, arms crossed tightly over herself. “Of course, we want the professionals to do what they came here for.”

Rae can hear the tight smile in the producer’s voice without looking. The familiar loathing grips her; she’s not exactly a Margot fan these days, either.

“Everyone, these are some colleagues of mine.” Rose’s voice makes Rae’s fists clench. “This is Professor Dennan. He’s an expert in parapsychology.”

This gets her attention, another psychologist. They’re basically replacing her. She glares across the room at the wiry old man, gray haired and bespectacled. He looks like any of dozens of professors she’d had at Uni. She wonders if they’ll cut her out of the pilot all together. Finn is pretty enough to carry it on his own.

“And this is Kathleen. She’s a clairvoyant, so hopefully she’ll be able to help us better understand what’s going on here. And this,” Rose puts a hand on the arm of a tall, heavy set man beside her, “is Father Morgan. He’s experienced in expelling unnatural forces back to their original realms.”

Father Morgan looks normal enough, but something about him makes all the hairs on Rae’s neck stand on end. He’s got an intensity, a kind of unblinking focus that she can feel from across the room. She’s in such a wretched mood, hating everyone, but he unnerves something deep inside her. He looks over at her, hawkish and unmoving. She holds back a shudder.

Finn stands suddenly, getting everyone’s attention. The Father turns toward him, eyes narrowed. “What are you going to do to get rid of this thing?” He asks, and it’s challenging, almost combative. She thinks she’s not the only one miserable tonight.

“That’s a good question, young man.” The professor starts, adjusting his glasses, but the clairvoyant steps forward, cutting him off.

“We think we’ve narrowed down what kind of presence you’re experiencing, Finn.” Finn scowls at her, crossing his arms too. “We’re going to do a few tests, some experiments to try and get a conclusive answer, so we know how to banish it.”

“Banish it?” Finn sneers, shaking his head. He runs a hand over his chin. “Jesus.”

Father Morgan glares at Finn. “I’ll thank you not to take the Lord’s name in vain. We may need its power here tonight, and you don’t want to diminish it with a cavalier attitude.”

“Alright, alright.” Margot holds out her hands, trying to lessen the tension in the room. “The plan is, let the experts do the work. Finn, Rachel, the uh, spirit,” she glances to Rose, who nods, “the spirit seems to be attracted to you, so you’re going to continue to do what you’ve been doing. Ask it questions, provoke it, call it out. Let’s see what we can make it do.” She rubs her hands together, glee pouring off of her. She glances at the dour faces around her, quickly adding, “So we can tell what it is and get rid of it. Okay?”

There’s a general murmur of acceptance, and Rae watches her feet as they scuff against the ancient floorboards. She’s so tight she might snap, all her muscles pulled to their limits.

“Alright then! Let’s do this!” Margot practically cheers. “Let’s get those lights out!”

Rae’s stomach roils, and she darts for the front door. She barely makes it to the shrubbery before she loses her lunch. From the living room, she can hear Margot laugh uncomfortably. “Uh, let’s just give her a minute.”

The door opens, and Finn’s there with a hand on her back, forehead crumpled with worry.“You alright?”

“No.” She coughs, laughing and crying and angry and sick. “Fucking nothing is alright.”


	7. Chapter 7

Dark like this, the house hardly feels like his. It’s his stuff, his pictures on the walls, Emmy’s toys in the basket in the corner, but everything seems distorted, surreal like in those movies he’d had to watch for film class. He’s trapped in _the Cabinet of Dr. Caligari_ , all the furniture narrow and crooked, the whole world out of proportion, slanted and sickening. He stares numbly around the room.

Nothing’s happened. It’s late, he thinks, though he can’t tell for sure. Nan’s clock had stopped keeping time right after the incident the other day. The long chime must have screwed up the mechanics somehow; it started ticking three or four times a second, and then other times skipping seconds altogether. He’d put it on the table in the back garden. He can’t just toss it out, it was Nan’s. So it stays outside.

That’s how he knows that the ticking he’s hearing is just in his head, that it’s just a sense of ticking rather than the real thing. He can’t trust what he hears anymore.

He thinks he might be losing time. This morning, he’d come to with his hands buried in cold soapy water in the kitchen sink, without remembering having started the dishes. It’s not a lot of time usually, not even really things he can keep track of, just not realizing that the sun had gone down, or missing the second half of Jeopardy, even though he’s been sitting there watching the whole time.

He hasn’t slept more than a couple of hours in ten days now. He must be falling asleep and not realizing.

He’d lied to Rae, he’s not staying at his Dad’s. It’s his house, and something deep within him revolts at the idea of surrendering his territory to something he can’t even see. It’s an animal thing, primal, he figures. Not sleeping is stripping him down to pure instincts. He’s not even afraid anymore, doesn’t feel chilled or haunted while in the house. He’s not really feeling much of anything. He just sits in his chair, in any chair, stares at the telly. He’s empty and it’s such a fucking relief.

He’d considered driving up to stay at Katie’s while the crew had done whatever they’d been doing this past week. It’d only taken a single look in the mirror, just a brief glance at his pale, gaunt face, at the bruises under his eyes, and he’d known. He couldn’t go to his daughter like this; he was barely better than a ghost himself. No, he was on his own until this thing was over.

Alone in a room full of people. It’s the worst kind of alone. God, he misses Emmy.

“It’s after three.” One of the new people says, the tweedy looking man. He holds a hand over his mouth to hide a yawn. “There’s no activity. Maybe we should call it a night.”

“It knows we’re trying to draw it out.” The woman says, squinting her eyes and peering around the room. “I can see it, just out of view, hiding. It doesn’t want to reveal itself.”

He huffs a laugh, he can’t help it. These people are so fucking ridiculous, with their fake intensity and their fake professionalism. This whole thing is ridiculous. Drawing out this bloody ghost. He laughs harder. The Father eyes him from the other side of the couch with disdain. Finn just sneers back.

“I’ll radio Margot, see what she wants to do. Nothing’s happened all night.” Sunny stands up, walking behind the couch toward the back windows, turning his back on them while he talks into the walkie.

They all listen in various kinds of silence- passive, taut, pensive. Bored, he thinks. They’re all mostly bored. The first couple of hours had been anxious, waiting for the ghost to show up and torment them. But the more time that passed without incident, the looser and more sullen everyone seems to have gotten. It’s clear that the spook team is disappointed, that they’d been promised a much more happening haunt. Rose seems almost abashed that she’d led them to expect so much more than the ghost would deliver. And Rae… Rae just seems distant and angry. Her emotions are like a low static buzz disturbing the air. He stays away as best he can.

“Give it another half an hour, guys. If there’s nothing by then, we’ll wrap up and try again tomorrow.” Margot’s voice is distorted by the speaker, but no less annoying. Another fucking night. Finn stands up, rubbing his temples.

“I’m going to the toilet.” He announces. No one even looks up.

He takes a piss, washes his hands, and it’s too quick. So he stands in the dark and looks at the little bits of himself that he can see in the mirror. Shining eyes, catching some kind of light from somewhere, everything else is dark and formless. He’s nothing. It’s strangely satisfying.

He stays for a long time, just looking into the void where his face should be, then reluctantly heads back out into the hallway. Rae’s waiting for him there, the frizz of her anger more obvious in the enclosed space. He’s taller than her now, he realizes out of nowhere. She has to raise her head to glare at him.

“Can I talk to you?” She hisses, shooting a look over her shoulder towards the front room. He doesn’t reply, so she grabs onto his arm and tugs him further into the hall. She opens the door into his bedroom, shoves him in and shuts it gently behind her.

He doesn’t want to do this, doesn’t want to deal with whatever her problem is, but he can’t think of a way out. He’s looking upward, trying to think through the sleeplessness when she turns around and glares at him again.

“What the fuck? What the fuck are you doing? Who do you think I am?” She’s sneering, hands clenched into fists at her sides, jaw tight. A vein is bulging out on her forehead, not red or swollen, just a pale, almost iridescent white line running from her temple up her forehead and then curving into the satiny baby hairs at the corner of her hairline. It’s beautiful, this line, this place where her blood can be seen pulsing under her skin.

“Finn!” She shoves him. “Are you even listening to me?”

“Sorry, what?” He jerks his eyes back down, but they don’t stay focused on hers. He watches her lips as they move. It occurs to him that there’s a bed very nearby.

“You think you can just fuck me and then pretend it didn’t happen? Well, you can’t. I’m not nineteen anymore.” Her cheeks are so red. “Why didn’t you call? What are you playing at?”

He looks at her, bristling with anger that he didn’t call, and he just wants to laugh. Who cares? He runs his hands through his hair, looking away, up and towards the corner of the ceiling.

“It didn’t occur to me, actually.” He thinks he keeps the laughter back, but just barely.

“It. Didn’t. Occur. To. You.” Her eyes are wide, so wide. He wonders how he’s never noticed before how huge her eyes are.

He shrugs, then lets a bitter, ugly laugh escape his throat. “In case you haven’t noticed, I’ve been a bit preoccupied.” He gestures around the room, around his house, around his whole worthless life. “Fucking calling after a shag didn’t really rate.”

She glares at him, but her eyes are damp and her lip trembles. “You mean _I_ didn’t rate.” He wishes he had the energy to feel something right now, to care that he’s so obviously hurting her. He doesn’t want to hurt her, but he’s not really in control of his actions anymore.

“Rae,” he starts, but it’s weary instead of reassuring, and even he can hear it.

She straightens her neck to deliver the blow. “You’re exactly who I was always afraid you were.”

It should hurt, it should wound him. It’s his fear, all this time, the thing at the root of his hurt and anger and resentment. He’s always worried that it was him who just wasn’t good enough for the only woman he’d ever loved. It should be scary that she can see that, scary that she can psychoanalyze him down to essentials in just a couple of days.

It’s just exhausting.

Rae turns her back to him after a moment, presumably after she doesn’t find what she’s looking for in his face. Finn sinks down onto the foot of the bed and puts his head in his hands, trying to hold in the jumble of words and thoughts and fear that are threatening to make his head explode.

“Don’t.” Rae says, and he lifts his head to look at her across the darkness of the empty room. She jerks her shoulders. “Don’t, I said.”

“Don’t what?”

“Don’t fucking touch me. You don’t get to touch me right now.” Her voice is steel, furious, and his blood runs cold in his veins.

His breath hitches, and when he blows it out, it forms a cloud in front of him. Had it been that cold? He can’t remember. He can’t remember anything through the dread that’s racking him.

“Rae…” He pleads, wanting to tell her to turn, wanting to tell her to run. Wanting to tell her anything. The words are caught in the ice in his throat.

“Don’t! You’re hurting me!” She jerks her arm violently, and then she gasps.

He’s never heard a sound like that before. He’s heard her gasp a thousand times, heard a hundred different types of her inhalations of breath, but nothing like this. It’s loud and sharp and terrified. And followed by a garbled cry, half shriek, half sob. He’s on his feet and crossing the room to her, but it doesn’t stop.

“No!” She cries, raising a hand to block her face. Something slashes across her arm, down the front of her chest, ripping her shirt open. He can’t see what’s doing it, can’t see what leaves the gashes in her skin, but he can follow the movement in the tearing of fabric and the welts that well up, blisteringly pink. Rae doesn’t scream, just makes a wet, choking sound.

It happens in an instant, before he can cross the few feet between them. He jerks her arm to pull her behind his back, blocking her from an invisible enemy. Rae cries, wrapping her arms around him, but he doesn’t turn for a long minute, just stares into the empty space in front of him. Waiting.

It’s freezing, bone chillingly cold. His panting forms crystals in the air before him, a sick parody of the pristine snow that had started falling the night before. He keeps her behind him with one arm. It’s still, silent- achingly, crushingly tense- for several long moments. He stops being human in that time, he thinks, falls back to pure biology and instinct. He has to keep her safe, and nothing, nothing is going to stop him.

And then a laugh sounds, low and faint. It shivers around them, more vibration than actual noise. Finn would know that laugh anywhere. He’ll know it in his dreams for the rest of his life.

It’s gone before he can react, and suddenly the cold is breaking and the tension is snapping. He spins and clutches Rae to his chest. She’s shaking, eyes wide and stunned. She’s not crying, in shock maybe, so foolishly, shamefully, he fills the lack and begins sobbing into her hair. They’re holding together so tightly, and he’s not sure who is clutching on to who.

Her fingers are painfully tight on his arms, and he’s sure he’s pulling the handful of hair that he’s holding on to. Everything hurts though, and that small pain barely registers. His body trembles with hers, as if he’s releasing everything all at once. Somehow, in the midst of the tears and the shaking and the pain, their mouths find each other.

It’s less kissing, more silent screaming.

Somehow it helps, the way the thing between them always has. Her mouth steals his sorrow, his fear, his tremulous hold on reality, feeds it back to him as something new. Their tongues tangle together, a dance, a song, and it soothes something ragged that he’s been burying within him.

Slowly, he regains control of himself, changes the desperation in his lips to gratitude and tenderness. He cups her cheek, caresses her skin. She sighs, and he notices that she’s not shaking anymore either. They part gently, hands soft where they meet one another, sweet breaths blending together.

“Are you alright?” He pulls back to look at her, examine the welts he’d seen forming on her skin. But there’s nothing, not even faded pink lines. Her shirt is torn on one side from collar to armpit, sagging open to reveal most of one lace-covered breast.

“I’m okay.” She looks down at her ripped shirt, and her eyes get damp again, so he steps forward to hug her, to do anything to make this better.

“I’m so sorry.” He whispers into her hair, arms wrapped around her as tight as he dares for comforting. “I’m so sorry, Rae.”

“What are you sorry for? You didn’t do this.”

He holds her, rocking back and forth slightly. How can he possibly explain? She’s being hurt and it’s all his fault. He struggles for the words to tell her. Knocking fills the room, soft and muted from the door, but they both jump.

“Everything okay in there?” A voice calls, Sunny probably.

Rae looks around, wild eyed. “Yeah, just a minute!” She calls, too chipper. She’s going to give it away.

“Can I come in?” He asks, curious and careful.

“I’m just getting a jumper.” She replies, more even this time. “I got cold. Finn’s helping.”

“Alright. Don’t take too long. Deanna wants to try something before we close up.” He raps the door once when he’s done talking.

Rae listens intently for a moment after, then whispers rapidly, stepping closer to Finn once more. “I don’t want to tell them what happened.”

“What? Why?” He asks to her back as she walks to his wardrobe and opens a door.

“Nothing happened all night, Finn. Nothing in front of them. This thing… it wants us. It’s toying with us. Telling them will only drag it out longer, make them want to film more.”

“But…” He starts to argue, but thinks better of it. He doesn’t want them around anymore. They’re not helping, they’ve only made things worse. It’s going to be up to him and Rae to fix this. The way it should have been in the first place. “Second drawer.” He tells her instead, and she pulls out a pale blue wooly jumper.

“Let’s just keep it between us. For now.” She tugs it over her head, then stands in front of him and puts a hand on his chest, eyes wide but steady. She’s so steady now. “If something else happens, fine. But for now, just between us.”

He nods. She arches up to kiss him once on the lips, softly. It feels like a punctuation mark, like a period on the end of this argument. He watches her walk to the door.

Just between them.

—

Historically, Finn Nelson was always an open book. It was one of the things that had drawn her in at first; his transparency was alluring after all the years she’d lived on lies. He’s different now, though. Darker, more inscrutable. She can’t read him anymore, but that means no one else can either.

So no one has any clue about what’d happened in the bedroom. She feels the secret like a shard, like a weapon she gets to use to regain control over something. She lets it curl her lips and sharpen her teeth.

They’re all clustered together when they come back, huddled up like birds. Rae rolls her eyes. Finn comes up behind her and touches her elbow as they hover in the entry to the front room.

“There you are.” Deanna says, a hint of irritation just below her pleasant tone. “Good. We can start then.”

“Start what?” Finn asks, and she looks over her shoulder at him, surprised at his hostility. He glances down, and his eyes flash black in the darkness.

“We’re going to call the spirit to speak.” Deanna bends to pull something from a bag Rae hadn’t seen behind the folds of her long skirt. She straightens up and holds out a dark box for them to see. “With this.”

Rae squints, trying to make it out. Finn scoffs loudly, and she feels the air move beside her as he throws his hands up. “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me. This isn’t a fucking game.”

“I know that. I know that.” She steps towards them. Tension radiates off of Finn, making the hairs on the back of her neck stand up. “It’s just a convenient way to communicate with the spirit world. The spirits are familiar with it, so it’s a good way to draw them out.”

“You people don’t seem to get it!” Finn’s voice rises. “I don’t want to draw it out! I want to fucking get rid of it! Why is that so bloody hard to understand?!”

Deanna shoots Rae a pleading look, but Rae scowls at her and moves back into Finn, pressing her back into his chest. He’s trembling.

“Finn,” Rose lifts her hands in front of her, pleads. “We do understand. We want to get rid of it, too. But to do that, we have to know what it is. There are different ways to banish different things.”

“What different things?” Sunny moves away from the psychics, crosses his arms over his chest. “What are we talking about here? How many different types of ghosts can there possibly be?”

The professionals exchange an uneasy look, even Deanna, who is busy ripping the plastic off the box in her hands. Rae takes another half step back, until she’s more firmly up against Finn. He puts a hand on her upper arm. She feels his deep breath.

They all talk at once.

“There are several kinds, actually. It could be a residual-“

“With the kind of activity you’ve experienced, we’ve ruled out-“

“It looks to me like the entity is male and fairly solid.”

The voices clamor over one another, but it’s the quietest voice that comes through the mess the clearest. Father Morgan’s deep baritone, “This isn’t a ghost at all, I’m afraid. It’s a demon.”

“Shut up!” Finn shouts, and all the voices stop abruptly. His voice is low and deadly when he asks. “A demon?”

Father Morgan looks over at them with a grave face, pity painted over the furrows in his cheeks. Rae feels a flash of loathing, then amusement. Just who the fuck does he think he is? She’ll show him. This is her show, she’s the star. She’s going to be wildly famous when all this is through. And he, well, he is nothing. She’s going to show them all.

“What I’ve seen and heard about all this, it all points to demonic activity- the timing, the severity, what Rose has relayed of what the entity said. I’m here to banish it, but we are hoping to figure out what kind of demon it is, so that it’s easier to get rid of.” He explains it slowly, evenly, like he’s explaining rules to a child. “Your cooperation, Mr. Nelson, would be very beneficial in that endeavor.”

Rae looks around at Sunny’s shocked face, at the resignation of the rest of them. She can’t bring herself to look at Finn. This is something they were holding back, the fucking professionals. A growl forms in her throat.

“No.” Finn says starkly, and then he starts to laugh, a sickly sound, like he’s breaking apart from the inside. She pulls her hand up to her chest, fingers clenched in the cuff of Finn’s too long sweater, takes a few steps back so she can see him.

“No.” He repeats through the manic laughter. “First it’s fucking ghosts that aren’t bullshit anymore, and now it’s demons? You expect me to believe this shit is real? But how could I not, right? I’m fucking living it!”

Rose swallows so hard that Rae can see it from across the room. Finn’s wild chortles make her stomach clench; the tension builds unbearably as it goes on and on, laughter like choking filing every corner of the room . No one says anything, they all just watch as he doubles over with the force of it. Rae carefully steps back, eyes fixed on his red face, the tears streaming down his cheeks. She’s not even out of arms reach when he stops. He doesn’t taper off, doesn’t wind down. Just stops.

And then he’s lurching into the room and sweeping everything off the side board with a roar. A vase flies across the room and explodes against the hardwood near Sunny’s feet. Father Morganshifts to avoid a picture frame, but another hits the professor’s shoulder. Deanna ducks into a crouch with her arms over her head.

Rae doesn’t move. Can’t move. She just watches in horror as Finn’s screech tapers down into wheezing. Father Morgan crosses the room and puts a hand on each of Finn’s shoulders. Finn keeps his head down, panting, but slowly his breath slows and he settles, hanging his head. It’s still silent in the room.

“It’s alright.” The priest soothes, hands still gripping Finn. “I know it’s a lot to take in, it’s alright. We’re only trying to help.”

“Don’t touch me.”

Morgan drops his hands and moves away. His eyes are hard and glittering as he sweeps them over Rae, and the sneer she’s barely been repressing breaks through. Morgan shakes his head.

“We know this is difficult, Finn.” Rose says.

“If we can get it to speak through the Ouija board, then we can tell what it is.” Deanna holds the planchette out to Finn like an explanation. He doesn’t look up.

“Be strong for a little longer, young man. This is almost over” The psychologist is trying to bolster Finn, trying to pull him out of the fear that seems to be eating him alive, but it only serves to make Rae furious. Don’t they know? Can’t they see? He doesn’t have any strength left.

“Fine.” Rae cuts in over the others. Finn lifts his head, but its slow and pained, like it weighs a twenty stone. “Let’s just do it, get it over with.” Deanna actually smiles at this, the cow. “Finn can sit it out, he’s had enough. Leave him be.”

Everyone talks at once, a chorus of protests and ‘buts.’ “Leave him be!” Rae yells over the mess, forceful and startling.

They quiet down, but for a moment, they all stare at her, try to see if she will break. Rae squares her shoulders, lifts her chin and glares at each of them in turn, nostrils flaring. Deanna is the first to turn away, and she sits down on the sofa and sets the board on the coffee table. The others slowly gather around, dragging chairs or folding themselves onto the floor. Sunny crosses the room to put an arm around Rae’s shoulders. She’s not sure if the half hug is meant to comfort her or to comfort him, but from the look on his face when he pulls away, it doesn’t help either party.

She feels like she’s made of steel and ice and a chalky frozen loathing of all of them. Finn gives her a sad, weighted look as she passes by him, but she’s too cold to hold anything else within her, to make room for anything else in this fucked up muddle.

Rae pulls a footstool up to the last open corner of the coffee table and bends to place her two fingers on the planchette. When she glances up at the other weary faces hovering above the board, she has the sensation that everything else is falling away. Her fatigue, her anger, the pit of sick anxiety in her stomach. It’s not quite the same as the circle feeling from last time, not that same soul-sucking void that surrounded them, but it’s a distant cousin perhaps. Time stops, the room around them blurs and fades, all that’s left is the uncomfortable clump of seven adults hunched over to put their fingers on a small piece of plastic… and a razor sharp focus that Rae hasn’t felt since the days of her Uni exams.

She lets out the breath she hadn’t know she was holding and drops her eyes back down to the planchett, waiting. The hairs on her neck rise again, along with black, electric tension creeping up her spine.

They wait for what feels like an eternity. The planchette stays still, hovering in the center of the board, caught between the G and the T. Deanna asks questions for a while, until Rose shoots her a frustrated look and takes over, asking for “He.” Sunny sits beside Rae, and she watches the muscles in his arms twitch. The professor clucks under his breath.

“Finn is going to have to join us.” Father Morgan is grim, and Rae glances over to see him leveling a sad, thoughtful look at Finn. He pulls his fingers away and leans back in his seat, crossing his arms over his chest. “He’s the focus of the demon. It won’t acknowledge us without you.”

Deanna and Rose both turn to look at Finn, and she can almost feel the pressure they’re putting him under with their stares. She expects Finn to scowl, to squint, to show signs of the anger she knows he must be teeming with. But instead, he raises his head and shrugs, mouth curling up into a wry smile. Rae’s stomach churns abruptly, and she has to run to the kitchen to spit bile and vomit into the kitchen sink.

No one follows her this time, so she washes her hands and rinses out her mouth, stands shaky and tremulous before the sink until the swirling in her head stops. She lets the water run, nearly drowning out the low murmur of the others talking, but when she catches the soft baritone laughter, she jumps to turn the knob so she can hear it better. It’s gone. She tells herself it was Father Morgan, with his deep voice, that the joke is just over now.

She knows better. She squeezes her eyes shut, clenches her fists against the fear.

Finn’s perching on half her ottoman when she returns, and his eyes trace over her face. “You ok?” He asks, then shakes his head. “That’s a stupid question, of course you’re not.” He puts a hand on her thigh, high, unthinkingly proprietary. Rae looks down at it for a moment, then around the faces clustered over the board.

They’re knowing and smug, shooting each other I-told-you-so glances and mocking smiles. Rae swallows, the bile rising in her throat again. She wants to cry. Another loss of power.

“Well then, let’s get started.” Deanna rubs her hands together. Rae shakes her leg until Finn removes his hand. “Everybody, two fingers on the planchette.”

They all bend in, jostling to make space for eight sets of hands. As soon as the last pair of fingers meets the plastic, the swirling starts in her head again, the shaking loose of all the non-essentials. The focus returns, sharp and almost painful. She can feel the air rasping into her lungs.

There’s half a second of stillness, and then before Rose has finished opening her mouth, the planchett jerks. It moves slowly over to hover on HELLO.

There’s a collective movement as everyone looks up at Finn. He’s frowning down at the board, eyebrows twisted up on his forehead. He’s breathing heavily, and Rae thinks that she must not be the only one with the unsettling focus.

“Are you doing that?” Professor Dennan asks, and Rae can’t help but smile at the tremor in his voice.

“What?” Finn wrenches his eyes away from the board and notices the circle of uneasy, accusing faces. “Am I moving it? No.”

Father Morgan cocks his head. “It’s attached to him.” He announces with a nod. “He’s the locus.”

“Keep going. Talk to it.” Deanna whispers, excitement shivering in her voice.

Sunny groans, and Rae looks over to see him sweating.

“Is this the same entity we spoke to the other night?” Rose asks. Finn arm jerks against hers, and Rae knows exactly what he must be thinking. _There could be others?_

The planchette glides over the board in loop before settling over YES. Deanna exhales.

“The one who calls itself He?” The plastic under their fingers trembles, then makes a small circle and lands on YES again. “Tell us, where do you come from?”

Father Morgan nods approval to Rose for her question. Rae keeps her eyes on the planchette, which is slowly moving over the letters on the board. Dennan calls them out, “N. I. G. H. T. M. A. R. E. S.”

Finn chortles as the professor reads the last letter. When they look up at him, he shrugs. “What? It’s funny.”

Father Morgan looks up from the board and keeps his eyes trained on Finn as Rose asks the next question. Rae’s stomach roils and prickles dance down her spine.

“What is it you want here?” Rose’s voice gets firmer, stronger with each question. The sides of Rae’s vision start to blur, the pressure around them is so great.

The planchette makes several long looping swirls, then creeps slowly over the letters. There’s a sense that the group is holding its breath as the words are spelled out one by one. Dennan doesn’t read them out, they just watch.

SHE IS MINE.

Finn barks a laugh, shocking and loud in the tense silence. Everyone jumps, and several fingers lift off the planchette, which rocks gently on the board. Sunny tucks his hands beneath his armpits, and Father Morgan places one on each of his knees. Rose glares at them, hisses that they all need to keep their hands in the middle.

“What’s the point? It’s the same shit this _thing_ said last time.” Finn shakes his head and wiggles his fingers in front of him. “How is this supposed to help you figure out what it is?”

“I think we’re getting a fairly good picture.” Morgan is dry, head cocked and eyebrows raised.

“Please, we need to finish.” Rose pleads. Deanna echoes the words quietly.

Finn rolls his eyes, and they all lean forward again. Rae hasn’t moved her fingers. She feels stiff, taut. A sigh shivers out of her, and she thinks that once this is over, she’s good to need a very long vacation on a beach and a very good therapist. The red feeling, that dry, icy burning that’s been building in her has grown almost unbearable. She has a suspicion that if they don’t turn the lights on soon, she may faint.

“We charge you, tell us what you want.” Rose’s voice is deep and toneless.

“It’s here.” Deanna whispers, nearly on top of her. “I can see a dark shape, black and heavy and hulking. Just there.” She jerks her head. Rae doesn’t look.

The planchette moves quicker this time. Rae’s not sure anyone else is following the movement, since they’re all straining to try and see the figure Deanna is staring at. Rae adds up the letters as the planchette pauses briefly and jerks forward.

ALREADY HAVE IT.

She looks at Sunny, at Finn. No one else has seen what the demon spelled, what it’s said. Father Morgan is watching Finn, who looks over at her with a grin that fades when he sees her pale, shocked face.

“What is it?” Finn asks, looking down at the board once more. She tries to tell him, tries to explain to all of them that the horrible feeling she’s had all night, the tight black heaviness building underneath her skin was right. They’re too late. Whatever this thing wanted, it’s already gotten.

Finn’s face is gaunt, pale and drawn. His eyes are shadowed and dark and deep. His mouth is twisted.

She tries to tell him, but she can’t make the words leave her throat. And then the laughter starts, like a storm moving in. It’s low at first, and she’s not sure anyone else can hear it. But it builds, pressure rising in the room, the sound following a half a beat behind. The familiar, horrible laughter, louder and louder.

“Quick!” Rose yells over the noise. “We charge you to leave! You are not welcome here! GOODBYE!” She jerks the planchette over the goodbye on the board, and the laughter abruptly cuts off.

They stay frozen over the table for a minute, wide eyes looking around as they listen. Finally Rose exhales and leans back. The rest of the group slumps back into their seats, save Father Morgan and Finn who are staring at one another, oblivious to the rest of the world.

“I think we have what we need now.” Deanna breathes. “I’m fairly sure I can indentify it based on what I saw.”

Professor Dennan rubs a shaking hand over his jaw. “I’ve never experienced anything like this.” Sunny pats his shoulder in comfort, then picks up his walkie talkie and turns it on. The crackle fills the silence, and he sighs in relief.

“Margot,  did you get what you need? I think we’re all ready to call it quits in here.”

“Wait.” Morgan says, breaking his stare with Finn and raising his head. “Do you smell that?”

“Fuck.” Sunny mutters. Then into the radio, “Margot, do you copy?”

“What is that smell?” Deanna asks, standing up and walking towards the hallway. A horrible smell creeps into the room, like rotten eggs or burning garbage. Rae turns her head, starts to gag.

“Margot, I’m going lights on. Do you copy?” Sunny is nearly yelling into the walkie. “Do you copy?”

“Is something burning?” Finn stands up. “I’m turning on the fucking lights.”

The stench washes over Rae like a wave, like a cloud that’s surrounding her. Her gagging turns into retching. It’s only then, with the need to vomit rising in her again that she realizes that the pressure from the Ouija session hasn’t broken. She’s still taught and filled with the icy burning. She doesn’t make it outside, doesn’t even make it off the ottoman. Rae turns and spits bile onto the floor.

Behind her, she can hear Finn’s heavy boots stomping down the hallway, hear the creak of the fusebox door being opened. With a faint electric hiss, the lights shimmer on and finally, the pressure dissipates. Rae slumps over, folds into herself. The smell has gone as well.

The front door bursts open, spilling more people into the room, and everything is chaos of lights and noise and people talking over one another. Rae forces herself up on shaking legs and heads into the bathroom, rinsing out her mouth and grabbing a towel to clean up her sick.

She trails a hand along the wall for support as she makes her way back to the front room, and it’s only when she stumbles that she sees it. It’s a picture of Finn and Emmy, at a lake. Emmy’s in a bathing suit, and Finn’s got his arms wrapped around her. It’s an ordinary picture, nothing unusual in the pose or location.

But where Finn’s face should be in nothing but a charred black spot. Rae covers her mouth with a hand, trying not to cry out. She forces her feet to another picture, only to find the same thing. Finn and Gary together in front of Gary’s old house, Finn’s face missing, and empty circle of ash in it’s place.

The world swirls around her, starts to close in. Her knees don’t seem to be working right. She closes her eyes, lost to a swell of oblivion.

As she falls, a single thought flashes through Rae’s mind. _It already has what it wants._


End file.
